6 ms·

The Times is really going hard on the gloom and doom lately https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.c

The Times is really going hard on the gloom and doom lately https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com

verytrivial 8y ago
How do you know you're not just complaining about reality?
- kbutler 8y ago
  "on virtually all of the key dimensions of human material well-being—poverty, literacy, health, freedom, and education—the world is an extraordinarily better place than it was just a couple of centuries ago." https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/11/30/why-the-world-is-getting-better-why-hardly-anyone-knows-it/#2da495147826 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/11/30/why-the... Lots more examples. But if you primarily get your impression of the "state of the world" from news sources, you get exactly the opposite impression. "If it bleeds, it leads" Or from the Forbes article, "The media does not tell us how the world is changing, it tells us where the world is going wrong. It tends to focus on single events particularly single events that have gone bad. By contrast, positive developments happen slowly with no particular event to promote in a headline. “More people are healthy today than yesterday,” just doesn’t cut it."
  - IshKebab 8y ago
    People are much better off. The world (the natural environment) is not. And the effects of its destruction haven't started affecting people too much yet but it will.
  - kibwen 8y ago
    Citing that source is a bit tone-deaf considering that it concludes with the following: "Obviously big problems remain. Having 1 out of 10 people living in extreme poverty today is unacceptable. Humanity’s impact on the environment is at a level that is not sustainable and we urgently need to reduce our impact. Continuing threats to our political freedom and liberty must be dealt with." Considering that the NYT articles that get the most traction here are about the environment (such as this very one), poverty/income inequality, and politics, trying to wave away these articles as fearmongering with "don't worry, the world is better!" is particularly counter-productive to actually making the world a better place.
    - kbutler 8y ago
      Yes, every article that describes progress and a good situation has an obligatory disclaimer that problems remain. Articles describing problems do not generally have a recognition of progress made. Recognizing that the world is a much better place than in previous centuries does not imply that everyone is in a good place, or that we have no improvements to make. We've done great things! Now do better!
  - revscat 8y ago
    Fine. Show me where insect populations have not been decimated. Find a environment where glaciation is increasing, or record low temperatures are being consistently recorded year over year. Short term gains over medium term doom is hardly something to brag about.
    - arethuza 8y ago
      We moved to a house in the country about 2 years ago and it seems to be in a small oasis of insect life - I suspect that because it's quite rather hilly it is low intensity cow and sheep farming with a lot of scrub and woodland. Going by prevailing winds its probably 15km (mostly over sea) to the nearest areas with more intensive arable farming. It's very noticeable that we have more insects here than surrounding areas. For the avoidance of doubt: I'm not disagreeing with the article!
    - kbutler 8y ago
      The origin of this thread was NY Times emphasis on doom and gloom. The reason is that it sells, even if the world as a whole is getting better. For your specific points: Yes, it looks like overall insect populations are down (and more than just decimated). But note that projections of insects thriving because of global warming are also framed as bad news: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/climate/insects-eating-more-crops.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/climate/insects-eating-mo... https://phys.org/news/2018-08-global-insects-crops.html https://phys.org/news/2018-08-global-insects-crops.html "environment where glaciation is increasing": Greenland 2018 "large net mass gain for the ice sheet in 2018 of 150 billion tons" https://nsidc.org/greenland-today/ https://nsidc.org/greenland-today/ (the exception that proves the rule, if you like). But note that if we start our glacier baseline at the end of the little ice age, we'd expect a lot of glacial retreat simply from reversion to the mean. Record temperatures is really not a good indicator (weather, not climate), especially with the bias of increased urbanization, but the southeast US is getting colder https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/02/20/defying-climate-change-southeast-u-s-is-getting-colder-instead-of-warmer-via-polar-vortex/#77672555f84c https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/02/20/defying-c... and note that the list of coldest temperatures recorded includes many in the 2010s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#Lowest_temperatures_recorded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#Lowest... If you want to frame global warming in a more positive light, the temperature changes in the world up to this point have been overwhelmingly positive. The climate of the 1800s was too cold in much of the breadbasket regions of the world. Temperatures overall have moderated (warmer colds) rather than become more extreme (hotter hots) (which is consistent with CO2-influenced warming). That isn't to say that all warming is beneficial, that future warming will be beneficial, or that CO2 doesn't influence the climate. Just that there's a lot more reporting of the "dooooom" than of the "look how much progress we've made".
acheron 8y ago
Not surprising. I'm sure it gets the clicks and the ad eyeballs, plus as a bonus it supports their political agenda.
- m0skit0 8y ago
  Which political agenda is that?
  - jerf 8y ago
    How do you feel reading this article? Who benefits from that feeling? Is there anyone you're more likely to give money or votes to? Are there any actions with economic impact you feel like you should take? And most cynically, isn't there a part of you that feels like you're morally superior or have secret knowledge that the other people below you on your social scale don't share, and you now despise that other group for not "seeing the truth" that much more, solidifying an "us vs. them" mentality with another brick in the wall? Yes, there's politics here. Being "political" doesn't mean it's wrong, though we have that default reaction for a fairly solid reason, but, still, being "political" doesn't mean it's wrong. There's definitely politics, though.
    - mturmon 8y ago
      > ...part of you that feels like you're morally superior or have secret knowledge that the other people below you on your social scale don't share... I see where you’re going, but can’t this criticism be applied to any factual journalism? And isn’t it therefore vacuous?
      - jerf 8y ago
        "I see where you’re going, but can’t this criticism be applied to any factual journalism?" Selection of what facts to present is intrinsically political. (Related, I can't find it in myself to get too upset about "filter bubbles", because you can't simply absorb "all data", and consequently, you are always going to be in a filter bubble merely due to that fact. You can question the nature of your current bubble, but you can't "escape" the way some people seem to think they can.) The specific case of prompting you to feel an in-group reaction is not always a primary goal, though anyone would be excused for thinking otherwise if they consume too much mass media or explicitly political media. Of course if you try hard enough you can always pattern match to a given story somehow, but it's certainly sometimes a more explicit goal than other times. As an example, a straight-up insult targeted at a group may prompt in-group feelings, but not necessarily any "secret knowledge" feelings. "And isn’t it therefore vacuous?" In the strictly logical Aristotelian sense of "statement is true or false and nothing in between", yes, all statements are political, and the statement is vacuous since it fails to distinguish between cases. In a logical system with degrees of truth, some statements are definitely more political than others ("Vote $PARTY" vs. "Wheat is a staple crop of humanity" vs. "Vote $PARTY or you are despicable human being unworthy of life"), even if you never really reach true zero. In the human sense of "things that are vacuously true but you still need to keep in mind even so", it's something to keep in mind. There's a surprising number of statements that are obviously or vacuously true, yet we still need near-constant reminding of or we just somehow forget them.
esarbe 8y ago
I'd rather call it 'reporting the facts as they are' than 'gloom and doom'. Did you notice that we -- humanity -- are rushing full steam ahead into a global ecosystem collapse?
clarkmoody 8y ago
I expect the greatest driver of interest in the news is fear. The second greatest is anger. For a tech crowd, this is relevant due to our general fear of the unknown (new technology). Will this a) destroy us all? b) take my job? Pointing out the minute failings of new technology will confirm people's bias and fears. A large contingent of HN posters seem convinced that AI will take all the jobs, and that this is a Bad Thing. This particular article plays into our environmental fears, which is also a topic near and dear to HN commenters. Both the nobody-is-employable and capitalism-is-killing-us crowds can agree that the solution to these problems is immediate massive increase in the power of the government Before It's Too Late (TM). Getting the Anger clicks is easy: Trump! "Look at the things Trump is doing. Doesn't that make you angry!?" Click. Click. Click. As in all things: follow the money. When you get fearful or angry from some news article, realize that you are being played. How does reality differ from the story you're being told? Think back a few years to some sensational stories. How did that turn out? More than likely, things are fine. We didn't all die from H1N1, swine flu, bird flu, Ebola. A few years ago, Texas passed campus carry laws, so college students and staff can carry concealed handguns. How many stories can you remember that bear out the (predictably) hysterical headlines of the time?
- esarbe 8y ago
  That's a very cynical view on things that can be used to justify any inaction on any topic. Sure, newspapers are trying to sell their papers. That doesn't mean that the dangers they are informing about aren't real. I wouldn't suggest to let newspapers drive your decisions. They can inform you however that you might have to dive deeper into a topic and find whatever information you can find from more based sources. I'd suggest you take this opportunity to do some research about the state of the global ecosystem by reading the article and refuting some of the claims made. Or fail to refute.
  - clarkmoody 8y ago
    I was responding specifically to the GP > The Times is really going hard on the gloom and doom lately I'm not making a comment about the state of the global ecosystem, rather the state of the news media.

The Times is really going hard on the gloom and doom lately https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com

verytrivial 8y ago

How do you know you're not just complaining about reality?

kbutler 8y ago
"on virtually all of the key dimensions of human material well-being—poverty, literacy, health, freedom, and education—the world is an extraordinarily better place than it was just a couple of centuries ago." https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/11/30/why-the-world-is-getting-better-why-hardly-anyone-knows-it/#2da495147826 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/11/30/why-the... Lots more examples. But if you primarily get your impression of the "state of the world" from news sources, you get exactly the opposite impression. "If it bleeds, it leads" Or from the Forbes article, "The media does not tell us how the world is changing, it tells us where the world is going wrong. It tends to focus on single events particularly single events that have gone bad. By contrast, positive developments happen slowly with no particular event to promote in a headline. “More people are healthy today than yesterday,” just doesn’t cut it."
- IshKebab 8y ago
  People are much better off. The world (the natural environment) is not. And the effects of its destruction haven't started affecting people too much yet but it will.
- kibwen 8y ago
  Citing that source is a bit tone-deaf considering that it concludes with the following: "Obviously big problems remain. Having 1 out of 10 people living in extreme poverty today is unacceptable. Humanity’s impact on the environment is at a level that is not sustainable and we urgently need to reduce our impact. Continuing threats to our political freedom and liberty must be dealt with." Considering that the NYT articles that get the most traction here are about the environment (such as this very one), poverty/income inequality, and politics, trying to wave away these articles as fearmongering with "don't worry, the world is better!" is particularly counter-productive to actually making the world a better place.
  - kbutler 8y ago
    Yes, every article that describes progress and a good situation has an obligatory disclaimer that problems remain. Articles describing problems do not generally have a recognition of progress made. Recognizing that the world is a much better place than in previous centuries does not imply that everyone is in a good place, or that we have no improvements to make. We've done great things! Now do better!
- revscat 8y ago
  Fine. Show me where insect populations have not been decimated. Find a environment where glaciation is increasing, or record low temperatures are being consistently recorded year over year. Short term gains over medium term doom is hardly something to brag about.
  - arethuza 8y ago
    We moved to a house in the country about 2 years ago and it seems to be in a small oasis of insect life - I suspect that because it's quite rather hilly it is low intensity cow and sheep farming with a lot of scrub and woodland. Going by prevailing winds its probably 15km (mostly over sea) to the nearest areas with more intensive arable farming. It's very noticeable that we have more insects here than surrounding areas. For the avoidance of doubt: I'm not disagreeing with the article!
  - kbutler 8y ago
    The origin of this thread was NY Times emphasis on doom and gloom. The reason is that it sells, even if the world as a whole is getting better. For your specific points: Yes, it looks like overall insect populations are down (and more than just decimated). But note that projections of insects thriving because of global warming are also framed as bad news: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/climate/insects-eating-more-crops.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/climate/insects-eating-mo... https://phys.org/news/2018-08-global-insects-crops.html https://phys.org/news/2018-08-global-insects-crops.html "environment where glaciation is increasing": Greenland 2018 "large net mass gain for the ice sheet in 2018 of 150 billion tons" https://nsidc.org/greenland-today/ https://nsidc.org/greenland-today/ (the exception that proves the rule, if you like). But note that if we start our glacier baseline at the end of the little ice age, we'd expect a lot of glacial retreat simply from reversion to the mean. Record temperatures is really not a good indicator (weather, not climate), especially with the bias of increased urbanization, but the southeast US is getting colder https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/02/20/defying-climate-change-southeast-u-s-is-getting-colder-instead-of-warmer-via-polar-vortex/#77672555f84c https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/02/20/defying-c... and note that the list of coldest temperatures recorded includes many in the 2010s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#Lowest_temperatures_recorded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#Lowest... If you want to frame global warming in a more positive light, the temperature changes in the world up to this point have been overwhelmingly positive. The climate of the 1800s was too cold in much of the breadbasket regions of the world. Temperatures overall have moderated (warmer colds) rather than become more extreme (hotter hots) (which is consistent with CO2-influenced warming). That isn't to say that all warming is beneficial, that future warming will be beneficial, or that CO2 doesn't influence the climate. Just that there's a lot more reporting of the "dooooom" than of the "look how much progress we've made".

acheron 8y ago

Not surprising. I'm sure it gets the clicks and the ad eyeballs, plus as a bonus it supports their political agenda.

m0skit0 8y ago
Which political agenda is that?
- jerf 8y ago
  How do you feel reading this article? Who benefits from that feeling? Is there anyone you're more likely to give money or votes to? Are there any actions with economic impact you feel like you should take? And most cynically, isn't there a part of you that feels like you're morally superior or have secret knowledge that the other people below you on your social scale don't share, and you now despise that other group for not "seeing the truth" that much more, solidifying an "us vs. them" mentality with another brick in the wall? Yes, there's politics here. Being "political" doesn't mean it's wrong, though we have that default reaction for a fairly solid reason, but, still, being "political" doesn't mean it's wrong. There's definitely politics, though.
  - mturmon 8y ago
    > ...part of you that feels like you're morally superior or have secret knowledge that the other people below you on your social scale don't share... I see where you’re going, but can’t this criticism be applied to any factual journalism? And isn’t it therefore vacuous?
    - jerf 8y ago
      "I see where you’re going, but can’t this criticism be applied to any factual journalism?" Selection of what facts to present is intrinsically political. (Related, I can't find it in myself to get too upset about "filter bubbles", because you can't simply absorb "all data", and consequently, you are always going to be in a filter bubble merely due to that fact. You can question the nature of your current bubble, but you can't "escape" the way some people seem to think they can.) The specific case of prompting you to feel an in-group reaction is not always a primary goal, though anyone would be excused for thinking otherwise if they consume too much mass media or explicitly political media. Of course if you try hard enough you can always pattern match to a given story somehow, but it's certainly sometimes a more explicit goal than other times. As an example, a straight-up insult targeted at a group may prompt in-group feelings, but not necessarily any "secret knowledge" feelings. "And isn’t it therefore vacuous?" In the strictly logical Aristotelian sense of "statement is true or false and nothing in between", yes, all statements are political, and the statement is vacuous since it fails to distinguish between cases. In a logical system with degrees of truth, some statements are definitely more political than others ("Vote $PARTY" vs. "Wheat is a staple crop of humanity" vs. "Vote $PARTY or you are despicable human being unworthy of life"), even if you never really reach true zero. In the human sense of "things that are vacuously true but you still need to keep in mind even so", it's something to keep in mind. There's a surprising number of statements that are obviously or vacuously true, yet we still need near-constant reminding of or we just somehow forget them.

esarbe 8y ago

I'd rather call it 'reporting the facts as they are' than 'gloom and doom'. Did you notice that we -- humanity -- are rushing full steam ahead into a global ecosystem collapse?

clarkmoody 8y ago

I expect the greatest driver of interest in the news is fear. The second greatest is anger. For a tech crowd, this is relevant due to our general fear of the unknown (new technology). Will this a) destroy us all? b) take my job? Pointing out the minute failings of new technology will confirm people's bias and fears. A large contingent of HN posters seem convinced that AI will take all the jobs, and that this is a Bad Thing. This particular article plays into our environmental fears, which is also a topic near and dear to HN commenters. Both the nobody-is-employable and capitalism-is-killing-us crowds can agree that the solution to these problems is immediate massive increase in the power of the government Before It's Too Late (TM). Getting the Anger clicks is easy: Trump! "Look at the things Trump is doing. Doesn't that make you angry!?" Click. Click. Click. As in all things: follow the money. When you get fearful or angry from some news article, realize that you are being played. How does reality differ from the story you're being told? Think back a few years to some sensational stories. How did that turn out? More than likely, things are fine. We didn't all die from H1N1, swine flu, bird flu, Ebola. A few years ago, Texas passed campus carry laws, so college students and staff can carry concealed handguns. How many stories can you remember that bear out the (predictably) hysterical headlines of the time?

esarbe 8y ago
That's a very cynical view on things that can be used to justify any inaction on any topic. Sure, newspapers are trying to sell their papers. That doesn't mean that the dangers they are informing about aren't real. I wouldn't suggest to let newspapers drive your decisions. They can inform you however that you might have to dive deeper into a topic and find whatever information you can find from more based sources. I'd suggest you take this opportunity to do some research about the state of the global ecosystem by reading the article and refuting some of the claims made. Or fail to refute.
- clarkmoody 8y ago
  I was responding specifically to the GP > The Times is really going hard on the gloom and doom lately I'm not making a comment about the state of the global ecosystem, rather the state of the news media.