8 ms·
Ways the world improved in 2018
- lclarkmichalek 8y agoWow, I didn't know the gender gap in primary and secondary education had closed so much. That's incredible.
- MuffinFlavored 8y agoWhy, in theory, isn't Congress made up of 50% women + 50% men?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dominotw 8y agohistorical inertia?
- xvedejas 8y agoPart of the answer might lie in seeing statistics for what percentage of congressional candidates have been women, over time.
- jacobolus 8y agoAmong Democrats, women are now up to about 40% in Congress. I could easily imagine that passing 50% in another decade or two as older members retire. But <10% on the GOP side. The short answer is: there is still a significant part of the electorate which prefers to have male representatives, and various networks and institutional structures in some parties which give men an advantage.
- meshr 8y ago> isn't Congress made up of 50% women + 50% men? it is true if Congress would be engaged in sex related questions only
- gumby 8y agoI don't see why that follows. But if it were true it would suggest that there are some important questions going unaddressed the way things are right now.
- meshr 8y agoIt was kind of joke, but why would congressman’s sex affect his decisions if he is professional? What are these important questions which are so affected by Y-chromosome?
- gumby 8y agoI don't know why you're being voted down -- perhaps people think you're trolling. Assuming you're naive, here's an example from today's paper: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/opinion/childbirth-injury-motherhood-misogyny.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/opinion/childbirth-injury... More generally: why have more than one representative at all? Because every person has a slightly different perspective based on where they're from. The wider the variety of opinions (at least to the degree they reflect the diversity of opinions -- urban/agricultural/wilderness; male, female; different levels of education and background; etc) -- the more useful the result.
- majui 8y agoOne step forward, two steps back.
- josselex 8y agoSo renwable Energy increased from 7 percent to 10 percent in 12 years with a perfect linear slope. So we just need only about 300 years till 100%. Good luck with that. Is anybody reading these plots? This is really the worst news I read this year.
- josselex 8y agoDon't know why I'm down voted. Did I miss anything? I thought I'd read about some good news but then it just showed how bad it really is... Let's hope we can speed up considerably.
- vladd 8y ago> anybody reading these plots? This is really the worst news A significant amount of work and investment goes into making some of these plots trend that way: https://datareport.goalkeepers.org/ https://datareport.goalkeepers.org/ You might be down-voted because you take that improvement for granted.
- singularity2001 8y agoYou mistook a sigmoid curve for a linear one.
- jackfoxy 8y agoNot only, but apparently includes bio-fuels. Sorry, but agriculture is hugely environmentally impactful. We should not be growing fuel. I think a lot of it is subsidized by governments. Extracting petroleum from the ground is going to continue to be cheap for a very long time.
- frickinLasers 8y agoThis would be more compelling if all the y axes started at zero.
- zavi 8y agoThe biggest issue is income inequality. So long as ultra-rich people exist none of these improvements really matter.
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- m0zg 8y agoThat's a wrong way to look at things. I wouldn't have any problems with what you said if you rephrased it as "as long as very poor people exist..." Socialist/communist revolutions have repeatedly shown that merely eliminating "the rich" leads to some very tragic outcomes for the poor down the road, complete with starvation, GULAGs, and millions of people dead.
- dang 8y agoCan you please stop posting generic ideological comments to HN? Regardless of which ideology or how right you are, they lead only to tedious topics about which no one has anything new to say—plus flamewars, which is what we're most trying to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- IkmoIkmo 8y agoThey should rename this improved in the last 20-30y, as shown by graphs with a y axis that starts and ends on the first and last datapoint. It's a nice article but as so often, a misleading title and suggestive charting choices. Hopefully fixing that will be in the 2019 article.
- singularity2001 8y agoConfirming the formula: "Contrary to popular belief the world constantly gets better in almost every metric, with one big exception: Nature"
- PavlovsCat 8y ago> Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces. -- Jean-Paul Marat, 1743-1793