7 ms·

Is the world really better than ever?

18 points by kawera 9y ago

shishy 9y ago
I'd recommend the book The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker. The article reminded me of it, but Pinker demonstrates why violence in our society has decreased over time (even though many people would intuitively think it's the opposite).
- JacksonGariety 9y ago
  It's always fascinating to me that when this question comes up (are we going downhill or uphill?) the answer inevitably turns to violence. Is violence the pinnacle of evil? Is nothing worse than violence? What about mental illness? Isolation? Separation from your family? Lack of meaningful cultural practices?
nemild 9y ago
If you're interested in this topic, I did lots of data analysis to show the nature of the skew in death coverage vs actual deaths in the New York Times: https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html My own view is that much of the mismatch between coverage and reality can be explained by media economics, where reader interest and media incentives encourage the coverage of extreme events. And while my data focuses on traditional media, I wouldn't be surprised if social media has a much greater skew.
rafiki6 9y ago
In the book Sapiens, the author makes a rather well researched and convincing argument that humans truly had their best times as hunter/gatherers. Generally if you were part of a tribe, you ate and survived and likely even reproduced. You were probably physically in decent shape but you were at the mercy of things like, larger predators, weather and disease. Humanity as a whole is CURRENTLY at their most prosperous, but for an individual human today whether or not you are better off is very very dependent on where you live. We live in a bubble in the West. And statistics are misleading to the plight of those not living in cosy, developed resource hungry nations. Further, we really need to work hard to maintain what we have. We need to reduce our population, depletion of resource and carbon footprint to not screw it up what's good. The questions is not whether the earth can support more humans, but if humanity NEEDS more humans to continue prospering. If we are to survive as a race and continue to prosper, our greatest innovations, whether or social or technological, will be around using less or being more efficient in deploying what we have.

18 points by kawera 9y ago

I'd recommend the book The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker. The article reminded me of it, but Pinker demonstrates why violence in our society has decreased over time (even though many people would intuitively think it's the opposite).

JacksonGariety 9y ago
It's always fascinating to me that when this question comes up (are we going downhill or uphill?) the answer inevitably turns to violence. Is violence the pinnacle of evil? Is nothing worse than violence? What about mental illness? Isolation? Separation from your family? Lack of meaningful cultural practices?

nemild 9y ago

If you're interested in this topic, I did lots of data analysis to show the nature of the skew in death coverage vs actual deaths in the New York Times: https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html My own view is that much of the mismatch between coverage and reality can be explained by media economics, where reader interest and media incentives encourage the coverage of extreme events. And while my data focuses on traditional media, I wouldn't be surprised if social media has a much greater skew.

rafiki6 9y ago

In the book Sapiens, the author makes a rather well researched and convincing argument that humans truly had their best times as hunter/gatherers. Generally if you were part of a tribe, you ate and survived and likely even reproduced. You were probably physically in decent shape but you were at the mercy of things like, larger predators, weather and disease. Humanity as a whole is CURRENTLY at their most prosperous, but for an individual human today whether or not you are better off is very very dependent on where you live. We live in a bubble in the West. And statistics are misleading to the plight of those not living in cosy, developed resource hungry nations. Further, we really need to work hard to maintain what we have. We need to reduce our population, depletion of resource and carbon footprint to not screw it up what's good. The questions is not whether the earth can support more humans, but if humanity NEEDS more humans to continue prospering. If we are to survive as a race and continue to prosper, our greatest innovations, whether or social or technological, will be around using less or being more efficient in deploying what we have.