3 ms·

But some of the things you mention only look bad when compared to even crappier alternatives. > Large quantities of mass-produced food instead of meager quanti

by alextp 16y ago

But some of the things you mention only look bad when compared to even crappier alternatives. > Large quantities of mass-produced food instead of meager quantities of undependable crops that you spend 90% of your working life growing; Around the baby boomer generation until people 20 or so years younger there was a sweet spot where mass-produced food was available but more expensive than more traditionally-prepared and traditionally-grown food. Also, people spent a lot more time cooking (and less time watching cooking tv shows), which helped create a relationship with food that wouldn't stand today's fast food habits. At least here in Brazil. > Facebook instead of being lonely and isolated in your suburban home, miles from any of your friends; The solution to this existed before the suburbs (which are a post-ww2 phenomenon), and is called living in small cramped places in cities close to where you work and to most people you will meet. Some people still live like this, and enjoy it. Suburbs are soul crushing, but they are by no means necessary. > HD porn instead of unhealthy sexual relationships; Well, not every sexual relationship is unhealthy, and if you ignore the healthy ones this is vacuously good. The truth is, developing healthy sexual habits is a difficult part of growing up, and keeping people in fantasy land is not a solution to this anymore than giving everyone a government allowance is a solution to the problem that it's hard to find fulfilling jobs. The other points are less glaringly false, but have small subtleties that can be teased out.

zephyrfalcon 16y ago
"But some of the things you mention only look bad when compared to even crappier alternatives." I think that was the whole point... mechanicalfish's list contains false dichotomies, in order to illustrate that the same is true of the original list.
jacobolus 16y ago
Which people in Brazil are we talking about, that had such better diets 50-60 years ago? In 1950, the life expectancy from birth in Brazil was 50 years (a big improvement from before 1930 when life expectancy was about 33 years; by 1975 the life expectancy was about 60 years, and today it's about 73 years). Part of this was high infant mortality and poor access to healthcare, but another big part of it was that Brazil, like most of the world, mostly consisted of chronically undernourished people. (These data are eyeballed from http://www.gapminder.org/world/ http://www.gapminder.org/world/)
- alextp 16y ago
  I mean my parents, my girlfriend's parents, my friends' parents, and almost every middle-class to upper-class person my age's parents as well. Not our grandparents, mind you.
  - jacobolus 16y ago
    > almost every middle-class to upper-class person Okay. That is only a fraction of the population of Brazil, which has long had one of the highest Gini coefficients in the world.

by alextp 16y ago

zephyrfalcon 16y ago

"But some of the things you mention only look bad when compared to even crappier alternatives." I think that was the whole point... mechanicalfish's list contains false dichotomies, in order to illustrate that the same is true of the original list.

jacobolus 16y ago

Which people in Brazil are we talking about, that had such better diets 50-60 years ago? In 1950, the life expectancy from birth in Brazil was 50 years (a big improvement from before 1930 when life expectancy was about 33 years; by 1975 the life expectancy was about 60 years, and today it's about 73 years). Part of this was high infant mortality and poor access to healthcare, but another big part of it was that Brazil, like most of the world, mostly consisted of chronically undernourished people. (These data are eyeballed from http://www.gapminder.org/world/ http://www.gapminder.org/world/)

alextp 16y ago
I mean my parents, my girlfriend's parents, my friends' parents, and almost every middle-class to upper-class person my age's parents as well. Not our grandparents, mind you.
- jacobolus 16y ago
  > almost every middle-class to upper-class person Okay. That is only a fraction of the population of Brazil, which has long had one of the highest Gini coefficients in the world.