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Wow, I rarely so deeply profoundly and strongly disagree with a statement. I'm fascinated by both how far humans have come, and how peaceful we've become. We h

by tomp 8y ago

Wow, I rarely so deeply profoundly and strongly disagree with a statement. I'm fascinated by both how far humans have come, and how peaceful we've become. We haven't had a major war for decades, despite having more and better weapons. Capitalism has unleashed a revolution in technology and society. We're improving lives more rapidly and profoundly than ever, despite there being more and more of us. There are long-term visions and movements springing up all across the world (ecological, environmental, etc) and they seem to be gaining steam. We're reaching for the stars, and it seems like we might actually get there eventually. It's really remarkable of what humans are capable of, both on the micro level (every time I'm driving I'm surprised there's not more accidents, given how slow human reaction times are and how fast and near each other cars are moving), and on the macro level (a society with 7 billion souls, each driven by its own mostly-selfish desires (survival, reproduction, power), making progress and deals and working on causes, together).

Bhilai 8y ago
The western countries have not had a major war in a while, thats true but thats not the reality for everyone else. I'd recommend you take a look at pictures of war ravaged Syria and read about children dying of starvation in Libya. Surely some western countries have reaped benefits of capitalism and ease of life with increased influence of technology, but again that is not true for many other parts of the world. I don't mean to diminish the great work many have done and the overall improvement in quality of life for some but its not as rosy as say for a huge chunk of the population of the world which lives in intense poverty.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  Progress is the reality for most of the world. War and poverty is much than it was ten, a hundred, thousand or ten thousand years ago. On pretty much every metric humanity is succeeding and moving forward.
- badpun 8y ago
  > Surely some western countries have reaped benefits of capitalism and ease of life with increased influence of technology, but again that is not true for many other parts of the world. I'd say some aspect of technology has got to be everywhere (except isolated tribes) - be it electricity, cars, medicine, plumbing, better seeds and agriculture equipment, cheap factory-made clothes etc.
- tomp 8y ago
  The data is clear: the situation is improving everywhere. War deaths rate are tiny compared with past decades [0] and have been trending downwards after having been stable for centuries [1]. Poverty and child mortality are falling, literacy and democracy is improving (this is obviously mostly happening in the "poor" parts of the workd, because the West is pretty much maxed out already) [2]. [0] https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/15 https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/15 [1] https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/6 https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/6 [2] https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...
albertgoeswoof 8y ago
Agree. The older I’ve gotten the more beauty I see in the world, despite understanding more and more about science, the universe and how minor we are. Interestingly I know several people that suffer heavily with depression and anxiety and I feel quite lucky not to have any mental health conditions. Whether my world view is a causal factor or an outcome of this, I am not sure.
PavlovsCat 8y ago
> I'm fascinated by both how far humans have come, and how peaceful we've become. If you told an ancient human about, say, genocide, do you think they even be capable of reactions as cold as, say, these: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102401 ? We live in a world were wars of aggression are still sanctified, and phrases like "fun sized terrorist" are still invented. Playing nice with murderers is not peaceful, at all. The gap between rich and poor is still growing, the arms race against the invidual is only just beginning and the individual is already DOA -- all that is also not to have a nice surprise in the end. This calm before the storm isn't even very calm, but the storm will really be something.
- CDSlice 8y ago
  You mean the same ancient humans that forced their slaves to become gladiators so that their populations could fill their lust for blood, the same ancient humans that viciously persecuted those who refused to worship their emperor as a god, the same ancient humans that would capture religious minorities, cover them in oil, and line them up along the roads to burn? Humans both ancient and modern are not peaceful creatures, the only thing that has changed is our technology for killing each other.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    > You mean the same ancient humans that forced their slaves to become gladiators I was thinking more along the lines of hunters and gatherers. Ancient Humans, not Ancient Romans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator I know you can find loads of cruel things elsewhere, too. Can you find them before cities? And even for Ancient Romans I wouldn't be so sure, they kinda prided themselves in arguing coherently. Even just changing the subject like that, whether from genocide or not, doesn't strike me as something the super legalistic and literal Romans would have been so prone to do. And at any rate, they're much, much closer to us than to ancient humans. > so that their populations could fill their lust for blood There is no such thing as an inherent lust for blood. This kinda sounds like Freud's drive to death and all that. > the same ancient humans that would capture religious minorities, cover them in oil, and line them up along the roads to burn Napalm.. Agent Orange.. depleted uranium.. not even to punish for something they considered sacrilege, but just to get rid of people. > Humans both ancient and modern are not peaceful creatures I'm not talking about peaceful, I'm talking about sadism and cruelty and greed for their own sake, and about being numbed to it. If you say humans have a lust for blood, that doesn't convince me at all, but it's proof positive that in 2019 (not still, since hundreds of thousands of years, but by now, since a few ten thousand maybe) we live in a world where that claim goes mostly uncontested. In my books, very sick people have a lust for blood because they need to destroy persons, because they haven't developed into a person. Other people probably have stuff like, for example, a desire for vengeance that gets created alongside the crime to be avenged, or a strong desire to push back when they are threatened, which gets created when they are threatened, but doesn't exist before or after. But just some kind of lingering dark thing that needs to be fed, some spooky "lust for blood"? I doubt you can find that without a form of abuse being somewhere in the equation, systematic or otherwise. > [Humans] have been genetically programmed through hunting behavior: cooperation and sharing. Cooperation between members of the same band was a practical necessity for most hunting societies; so was the sharing of food. Since meat is perishable in most climates except that of the Arctic, it could not be preserved. Luck in hunting was not equally divided among all hunters; hence the practical outcome was that those who had luck today would share their food with those who would be lucky tomorrow. Assuming hunting behavior led to genetic changes, the conclusion would be that modern man has an innate impulse for cooperation and sharing, rather than for killing and cruelty. -- Erich Fromm, "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness"
kakwa_ 8y ago
For each of your statements, there is a dark and depressing counter statement. For example: > We haven't had a major war for decades, despite having more and better weapons: Yes the last twos big ones were so horrible and pyrrhic that it king of prevented other major conflicts, and it was before/right at the start of the nuclear age. BUT, with nuclear weapons, even if unlikely, only ONE instance of a major conflict will spell the end of most Human civilization. And with authoritarian governments emerging around the world (China, Eastern Europe, Turkey, China...) tensions, even if relatively low historically, are growing. > Capitalism has unleashed a revolution in technology and society: Capitalism short term profit seeking and views is driving of the cliff in term of resource consumption. We could potentially have an Easter Island/Maya style collapse on a planetary scale withing a few generations. > We're improving lives more rapidly and profoundly than ever: Except for the internet, I don't think our lives have fundamentally changes since the 80ies (at least in western countries, in China, India and a lot of countries, representing a huge mass of Humanity, things have improved lately, and it's a positive). All the technologies we are using are quite old at a macro level, it just took quite a while to reach the masses: planes are 100 years old, and are getting slower since the 60ies, wireless networks are nearly 100 years old (Marconi), Computers were first built in the 40ies, transistors (which enabled reliable and compact computers) dates back from the 50ies, vaccines are from the 19th century, antibiotics from the 20/30ies (the 2 most impact-full medical discoveries IMHO). And in term of energy, which is at the heart of all the material progress we have seen in the last two centuries, we are still relying on things discovered over a century ago (electrical engineering and petrol engines), nuclear which is more recent (60/70ies for the first commercial power plants) failed to deliver a huge improvement, and the next big step, able to unlock an order of magnitude more energy is still elusive (Fusion?), Solar/Wind and other renewable being less convenient energy sources barely able to maintain our current situation in a sustainable manner if deployed massively. > There are long-term visions and movements springing up all across the world (ecological, environmental, etc) and they seem to be gaining steam: but these views are very slow to gain traction. The Kyoto Protocol was signed more than twenty years ago, and we are still at the same point. And it's not like global warming is a new thing, heck, even the first Civilization game (1991) had it as a game mechanic. This late acknowledgement might be too late to change anything. > We're reaching for the stars, and it seems like we might actually get there eventually: we went to the moon 50 years ago, and we have not reach a new big milestone (ex: Mars) since. I'm voluntarily bleak here, but this is to illustrate that a weird or depressed person like myself could not see things the same way as you are. I do find fascinating how humans were able to work together, even looking at a (not so) simple building, there is no way one tiny human would be able to build it, yet, thanks to the collaboration of humans, it exists. And then you look at the next building, and the next, and then you have a city, interconnected with other cities with huge constructions like roads, tunnels, bridges and cables spanning hundreds of kilometers, all these interconnection constituting a worldwide mesh built and improved across several generations, it's truly amazing and dazzling.

by tomp 8y ago

Bhilai 8y ago

The western countries have not had a major war in a while, thats true but thats not the reality for everyone else. I'd recommend you take a look at pictures of war ravaged Syria and read about children dying of starvation in Libya. Surely some western countries have reaped benefits of capitalism and ease of life with increased influence of technology, but again that is not true for many other parts of the world. I don't mean to diminish the great work many have done and the overall improvement in quality of life for some but its not as rosy as say for a huge chunk of the population of the world which lives in intense poverty.

albertgoeswoof 8y ago
Progress is the reality for most of the world. War and poverty is much than it was ten, a hundred, thousand or ten thousand years ago. On pretty much every metric humanity is succeeding and moving forward.
badpun 8y ago
> Surely some western countries have reaped benefits of capitalism and ease of life with increased influence of technology, but again that is not true for many other parts of the world. I'd say some aspect of technology has got to be everywhere (except isolated tribes) - be it electricity, cars, medicine, plumbing, better seeds and agriculture equipment, cheap factory-made clothes etc.
tomp 8y ago
The data is clear: the situation is improving everywhere. War deaths rate are tiny compared with past decades [0] and have been trending downwards after having been stable for centuries [1]. Poverty and child mortality are falling, literacy and democracy is improving (this is obviously mostly happening in the "poor" parts of the workd, because the West is pretty much maxed out already) [2]. [0] https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/15 https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/15 [1] https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/6 https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/6 [2] https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...

albertgoeswoof 8y ago

Agree. The older I’ve gotten the more beauty I see in the world, despite understanding more and more about science, the universe and how minor we are. Interestingly I know several people that suffer heavily with depression and anxiety and I feel quite lucky not to have any mental health conditions. Whether my world view is a causal factor or an outcome of this, I am not sure.

PavlovsCat 8y ago

> I'm fascinated by both how far humans have come, and how peaceful we've become. If you told an ancient human about, say, genocide, do you think they even be capable of reactions as cold as, say, these: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102401 ? We live in a world were wars of aggression are still sanctified, and phrases like "fun sized terrorist" are still invented. Playing nice with murderers is not peaceful, at all. The gap between rich and poor is still growing, the arms race against the invidual is only just beginning and the individual is already DOA -- all that is also not to have a nice surprise in the end. This calm before the storm isn't even very calm, but the storm will really be something.

CDSlice 8y ago
You mean the same ancient humans that forced their slaves to become gladiators so that their populations could fill their lust for blood, the same ancient humans that viciously persecuted those who refused to worship their emperor as a god, the same ancient humans that would capture religious minorities, cover them in oil, and line them up along the roads to burn? Humans both ancient and modern are not peaceful creatures, the only thing that has changed is our technology for killing each other.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > You mean the same ancient humans that forced their slaves to become gladiators I was thinking more along the lines of hunters and gatherers. Ancient Humans, not Ancient Romans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator I know you can find loads of cruel things elsewhere, too. Can you find them before cities? And even for Ancient Romans I wouldn't be so sure, they kinda prided themselves in arguing coherently. Even just changing the subject like that, whether from genocide or not, doesn't strike me as something the super legalistic and literal Romans would have been so prone to do. And at any rate, they're much, much closer to us than to ancient humans. > so that their populations could fill their lust for blood There is no such thing as an inherent lust for blood. This kinda sounds like Freud's drive to death and all that. > the same ancient humans that would capture religious minorities, cover them in oil, and line them up along the roads to burn Napalm.. Agent Orange.. depleted uranium.. not even to punish for something they considered sacrilege, but just to get rid of people. > Humans both ancient and modern are not peaceful creatures I'm not talking about peaceful, I'm talking about sadism and cruelty and greed for their own sake, and about being numbed to it. If you say humans have a lust for blood, that doesn't convince me at all, but it's proof positive that in 2019 (not still, since hundreds of thousands of years, but by now, since a few ten thousand maybe) we live in a world where that claim goes mostly uncontested. In my books, very sick people have a lust for blood because they need to destroy persons, because they haven't developed into a person. Other people probably have stuff like, for example, a desire for vengeance that gets created alongside the crime to be avenged, or a strong desire to push back when they are threatened, which gets created when they are threatened, but doesn't exist before or after. But just some kind of lingering dark thing that needs to be fed, some spooky "lust for blood"? I doubt you can find that without a form of abuse being somewhere in the equation, systematic or otherwise. > [Humans] have been genetically programmed through hunting behavior: cooperation and sharing. Cooperation between members of the same band was a practical necessity for most hunting societies; so was the sharing of food. Since meat is perishable in most climates except that of the Arctic, it could not be preserved. Luck in hunting was not equally divided among all hunters; hence the practical outcome was that those who had luck today would share their food with those who would be lucky tomorrow. Assuming hunting behavior led to genetic changes, the conclusion would be that modern man has an innate impulse for cooperation and sharing, rather than for killing and cruelty. -- Erich Fromm, "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness"

kakwa_ 8y ago

For each of your statements, there is a dark and depressing counter statement. For example: > We haven't had a major war for decades, despite having more and better weapons: Yes the last twos big ones were so horrible and pyrrhic that it king of prevented other major conflicts, and it was before/right at the start of the nuclear age. BUT, with nuclear weapons, even if unlikely, only ONE instance of a major conflict will spell the end of most Human civilization. And with authoritarian governments emerging around the world (China, Eastern Europe, Turkey, China...) tensions, even if relatively low historically, are growing. > Capitalism has unleashed a revolution in technology and society: Capitalism short term profit seeking and views is driving of the cliff in term of resource consumption. We could potentially have an Easter Island/Maya style collapse on a planetary scale withing a few generations. > We're improving lives more rapidly and profoundly than ever: Except for the internet, I don't think our lives have fundamentally changes since the 80ies (at least in western countries, in China, India and a lot of countries, representing a huge mass of Humanity, things have improved lately, and it's a positive). All the technologies we are using are quite old at a macro level, it just took quite a while to reach the masses: planes are 100 years old, and are getting slower since the 60ies, wireless networks are nearly 100 years old (Marconi), Computers were first built in the 40ies, transistors (which enabled reliable and compact computers) dates back from the 50ies, vaccines are from the 19th century, antibiotics from the 20/30ies (the 2 most impact-full medical discoveries IMHO). And in term of energy, which is at the heart of all the material progress we have seen in the last two centuries, we are still relying on things discovered over a century ago (electrical engineering and petrol engines), nuclear which is more recent (60/70ies for the first commercial power plants) failed to deliver a huge improvement, and the next big step, able to unlock an order of magnitude more energy is still elusive (Fusion?), Solar/Wind and other renewable being less convenient energy sources barely able to maintain our current situation in a sustainable manner if deployed massively. > There are long-term visions and movements springing up all across the world (ecological, environmental, etc) and they seem to be gaining steam: but these views are very slow to gain traction. The Kyoto Protocol was signed more than twenty years ago, and we are still at the same point. And it's not like global warming is a new thing, heck, even the first Civilization game (1991) had it as a game mechanic. This late acknowledgement might be too late to change anything. > We're reaching for the stars, and it seems like we might actually get there eventually: we went to the moon 50 years ago, and we have not reach a new big milestone (ex: Mars) since. I'm voluntarily bleak here, but this is to illustrate that a weird or depressed person like myself could not see things the same way as you are. I do find fascinating how humans were able to work together, even looking at a (not so) simple building, there is no way one tiny human would be able to build it, yet, thanks to the collaboration of humans, it exists. And then you look at the next building, and the next, and then you have a city, interconnected with other cities with huge constructions like roads, tunnels, bridges and cables spanning hundreds of kilometers, all these interconnection constituting a worldwide mesh built and improved across several generations, it's truly amazing and dazzling.