11 ms·

Social media's ills, rising wealth and income inequality, rising sea levels, mass extinction event, crumbling roads, shit wages, corruption in government and in

Social media's ills, rising wealth and income inequality, rising sea levels, mass extinction event, crumbling roads, shit wages, corruption in government and industry, governments overwhelmingly filled with representatives of other generations with different priorities...there is a huge list of reasons to be pessimistic and they are constantly thrown in our faces online.

empath75 7y ago
Hopefully you eventually take to the streets and do something.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
austincheney 7y ago
It’s really hard to take that seriously. If social media is causing you heartburn then back away from it or delete your accounts. I deleted my Facebook account nearly a decade ago and deleted my Reddit account last year. Nobody is forcing you to be a drug addict slave of online media. Some of your list looks like entitled anxiety desperately in search of sympathy. For example you mention rising sea levels. Do you own ocean front property or did you just list that for some abstract reason? In most countries corruption is at record low levels. Wages are also at record high levels.
- blattimwind 7y ago
  > Do you own ocean front property or did you just list that for some abstract reason? I know some nice Dutch people :)
- simmanian 7y ago
  >For example you mention rising sea levels. Do you own ocean front property or did you just list that for some abstract reason? I agree that we need balance in everything, but it's not too far fetched to think climate change will lead to mass refugee movements and result in a pretty turbulent world.
- yeahitslikethat 7y ago
  That's like saying if heroin is causing you pain then just back away from it. Rising sea levels will kill and or displace millions of people. That's heartbreaking for those who care.
  - el_benhameen 7y ago
    And it's terrifying (or should be) to even those who are only self interested. Displacement of millions means mass migration and destabilization of larger parts of the world. The climate change and warming that cause it mean crop failures, novel diseases, and weather changes that will have the potential of affecting everyone.
    - crooked-v 7y ago
      For a simple example, it's likely that literally the entire population of the Republic of the Marshall Islands will have to relocate in the next few decades: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/rising-seas-force-marshall-islands-relocate-elevate-artificial-islands/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/risin...
    - village-idiot 7y ago
      My bet is on war, sadly.
    - austincheney 7y ago
      Yes, that is bad. How bad though? To be both objective and realistic you would need to break that down as a cost increase, per capita, in portion to percentage increase of annual cost of living. There are real numbers to these things, and I suspect they are large, but I really don’t know. Objectively speaking until such numbers are simulated we are all just making things up and that is most depressing of all.
- francisofascii 7y ago
  Curious where the corruption measures are from? In the US, public trust in government is at historic lows. https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-government-1958-2019/ https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-gove...
  - mac01021 7y ago
    Corruption is hard to define. Lying to get into office and pursuing legislation that is supported only by moneyed special interests are probably both corrupt things a politician can do, and they certainly erode trust in the government. But the don't get tallied up in the same way quid-pro-quo bribes do. In many places and times, governments have been pervasively corrupt, so that for example, in practice you will never get a drivers license or a building permit unless you first bribe the inspector or officer who needs to award the permit. This type of corruption is on the decline in almost every country. To my (limited) knowledge it has been relatively rare in the USA throughout its history.
- bmcooley 7y ago
  I find it sad that things like rising sea levels and mass extinction do not worry you. Should someone only care about things that affect their own personal life? Rising sea levels are going to affect a large amount of people negatively, and mass extinction means we are losing a lot of biodiversity that we needn't be. Your viewpoint seems to lack empathy for other people and other species.
  - austincheney 7y ago
    Before you question a person’s empathy, honestly, what are you doing about those subjects yourself specifically? A key difference between empathy and sympathy, in all common definitions, is objectivity. Sitting around feeling sad on social media is sympathetic, not empathetic.
- rdiddly 7y ago
  I agree with the general sentiment of getting off social media, but I really doubt that wages (adjusted mind you) are at record high levels. As for the rising sea level, thus far not mentioned in this whole branch of the comment tree is the fact that it's going to cost us all money. There have been billions of dollars deployed/invested in port infrastructure. It wouldn't even have to end up being submerged, to become unusable by some number/type of ships. That in turn either requires modifying/rebuilding/relocating (costs money), or reducing/rerouting/cutting off flows of goods (raises prices, costs money). Not that that's a reason to get particularly depressed; the alienation is mostly what's doing that. But the economic precarity doesn't help matters.
  - austincheney 7y ago
    I completely agree, but my decisions on the subject would vary in proximity to the immediate distress of the subject and would in no way feature social media.
    - rdiddly 7y ago
      So much the better. You know the more I think about this, social media might be largely responsible both for the alienation that I mentioned, and for exaggerating the seeming proximity and urgency of every crisis (not just the big ones we should care about, but also the little ones that probably have no real effect on us other than as spectators). Both of those (social isolation and a steady stream of bad news imbued with a desperate urgency and importance) would tend to discourage and depress normal human beings!
- wickoff 7y ago
  Not everybody is that self-aware, I would argue that the majority isn't. You have to look at it from a statistical angle. What percentage of population is capable of not falling prey to sophisticated machine learning algorithms which optimize for engagement rather than the user's well-being? You are still commenting here for some reason. Does this bring any value to your life?
- mac01021 7y ago
  > Do you own ocean front property or did you just list that for some abstract reason? For one thing, "rising sea levels" is often used as a symbol, representing all the varied consequences of global warming, the most depressing of which may be global ecological turmoil, so you might consider taking it less literally. For another, rising see levels are going to wipe some island countries off the map and displace a quarter of the Bangladeshi population, among other things. It doesn't seem unreasonable to be dismayed by the social unrest that will surely accompany those events.
  - instantwhat 7y ago
    > For one thing, "rising sea levels" is often used as a symbol, representing all the varied consequences of global warming, the most depressing of which may be global ecological turmoil, so you might consider taking it less literally. Fascinating. It's good to see someone like you admit the lying. Or maybe you slipped and let your guard down. This is probably a relatively safe place to do so. Average people don't read HN, so they'll never find out. The problem with lying is that there are only two explanations: either your claims can't withstand honest scrutiny, or everyone's too stupid to understand the truth, so you have to fool them. History is littered with atrocities committed by those who believed the latter. In your case, which is it?
Consultant32452 7y ago
Constantly hitting records for economic highs. Lowest unemployment rate for blacks and Hispanics in the history of recorded unemployment rates. Rising wages. Just took a huge step in eradicating HIV in the US by securing free treatment for 200k poor people every year. Between the technological advances in solar/wind/batter, renewed interest in nuclear, and shrinking CO2 it seems climate change is well on its way to being solved. Significant prison reform which should be great for young people, especially minorities. Marijuana is well on its way to becoming legal. Gay marriage was recently made legal across the nation. I'm on the older end of the Millennial generation, and everywhere I look things are heading pretty rapidly in the right direction. Sure, millennials aren't the top political priority, but that age range isn't ever the top priority, so it can't be the cause of this wide spread pessimism. I mostly agree with you about social media, but I would add news and how news interacts with social media. Once the news figured out how to get the most views by really ramping up the hate/anger/fear, and were able to track that to the extreme, it really destroyed the way people get information. Every day is just more rage-bait fueled by this news/social media cohort.
- rawrmaan 7y ago
  > shrinking CO2 [citation needed] Global CO2 emissions are nowhere near peaking, let alone shrinking.
  - challenger22 7y ago
    I imagine GP was referring to US emissions, considering that his other points were US-centric. You are correct globally. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?tab=chart&time=1751..2016 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-... https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- masterj 7y ago
  > Between the technological advances in solar/wind/batter, renewed interest in nuclear, and shrinking CO2 it seems climate change is well on its way to being solved Do you realize that the most optimistic projections in climate change papers already assume massive improvements in these technologies? They also assume massive carbon extraction technologies working at global scale that don't exist yet. Even these optimistic scenarios have dire consequences, and we're not on track to hitting these at all. If it were a matter of "small improvements in over time", the tech would be sufficient, but it's more like we need to reduce double digit % of CO2 emissions year over year for the next several decades. https://twitter.com/robbie_andrew/status/1129667484527804418 https://twitter.com/robbie_andrew/status/1129667484527804418 Some countries do have declining CO2 emissions, but the ones that matter: China, India do not. Unless dramatic action is taken, we're still a long ways away from a global peak in CO2 emissions.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
agumonkey 7y ago
we need to cut the internet router, quick
Zarath 7y ago
Police state and mass surveillance are top of my list. Higher than global warming, higher than wealth inequality, higher than incompetent and corrupt governments.
- mac01021 7y ago
  Why? Concretely, how do you see the police state and mass surveillance impacting your life in a way that is more profound than the effects of global warming etc?
vkou 7y ago
The part where pessimism is listed as a problem is the icing on the cake. Millenials and Gen Z don't want optimism and hope. We want the other generation to be as frustrated and angry as we are. That'd bring about change. Well, quite recently it did, but change in the wrong direction.
Creationer 7y ago
I think the fundamental component is house prices. Our ancestors had much cheaper housing as a multiple of the median wage, and could mostly afford to buy based on the paid labor of the father alone. Those same ancestors are still sticking around, living in those houses, and demanding tribute in the form of medicare and welfare payments (2/3rds of the federal budget). I'm only saying this to spark and extend discussion: but a society in which Euthanasia is mandatory at age 80, with housing and monetary resources freed up for younger generations, is likely to be a happier and better place to live. Alternatively we greatly limit immigration (including cross-border) - to only the most skilled and intelligent immigrants - and we create some kind of huge carrot/stick to get older people out of big houses and into smaller, managed apartments. A comprehensive land value tax, with discounts for families with children under 16, could solve this.
- marshray 7y ago
  > I'm only saying this to spark and extend discussion Another term for this is 'trolling'.
- nullandvoid 7y ago
  Why do the young generation have any more a right to these houses than those that have worked all their life to afford one? ( coming from a young person )
  - BioMeditate 7y ago
    Don't think it's any kind of "right". All I will say is that we've paid high interest student loans for over 8 years now and equivalent to the cost of small home. We also both worked jobs in college.

empath75 7y ago

Hopefully you eventually take to the streets and do something.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

austincheney 7y ago

It’s really hard to take that seriously. If social media is causing you heartburn then back away from it or delete your accounts. I deleted my Facebook account nearly a decade ago and deleted my Reddit account last year. Nobody is forcing you to be a drug addict slave of online media. Some of your list looks like entitled anxiety desperately in search of sympathy. For example you mention rising sea levels. Do you own ocean front property or did you just list that for some abstract reason? In most countries corruption is at record low levels. Wages are also at record high levels.

blattimwind 7y ago
> Do you own ocean front property or did you just list that for some abstract reason? I know some nice Dutch people :)
simmanian 7y ago
>For example you mention rising sea levels. Do you own ocean front property or did you just list that for some abstract reason? I agree that we need balance in everything, but it's not too far fetched to think climate change will lead to mass refugee movements and result in a pretty turbulent world.
yeahitslikethat 7y ago
That's like saying if heroin is causing you pain then just back away from it. Rising sea levels will kill and or displace millions of people. That's heartbreaking for those who care.
- el_benhameen 7y ago
  And it's terrifying (or should be) to even those who are only self interested. Displacement of millions means mass migration and destabilization of larger parts of the world. The climate change and warming that cause it mean crop failures, novel diseases, and weather changes that will have the potential of affecting everyone.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    For a simple example, it's likely that literally the entire population of the Republic of the Marshall Islands will have to relocate in the next few decades: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/rising-seas-force-marshall-islands-relocate-elevate-artificial-islands/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/risin...
  - village-idiot 7y ago
    My bet is on war, sadly.
  - austincheney 7y ago
    Yes, that is bad. How bad though? To be both objective and realistic you would need to break that down as a cost increase, per capita, in portion to percentage increase of annual cost of living. There are real numbers to these things, and I suspect they are large, but I really don’t know. Objectively speaking until such numbers are simulated we are all just making things up and that is most depressing of all.
francisofascii 7y ago
Curious where the corruption measures are from? In the US, public trust in government is at historic lows. https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-government-1958-2019/ https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-gove...
- mac01021 7y ago
  Corruption is hard to define. Lying to get into office and pursuing legislation that is supported only by moneyed special interests are probably both corrupt things a politician can do, and they certainly erode trust in the government. But the don't get tallied up in the same way quid-pro-quo bribes do. In many places and times, governments have been pervasively corrupt, so that for example, in practice you will never get a drivers license or a building permit unless you first bribe the inspector or officer who needs to award the permit. This type of corruption is on the decline in almost every country. To my (limited) knowledge it has been relatively rare in the USA throughout its history.
bmcooley 7y ago
I find it sad that things like rising sea levels and mass extinction do not worry you. Should someone only care about things that affect their own personal life? Rising sea levels are going to affect a large amount of people negatively, and mass extinction means we are losing a lot of biodiversity that we needn't be. Your viewpoint seems to lack empathy for other people and other species.
- austincheney 7y ago
  Before you question a person’s empathy, honestly, what are you doing about those subjects yourself specifically? A key difference between empathy and sympathy, in all common definitions, is objectivity. Sitting around feeling sad on social media is sympathetic, not empathetic.
rdiddly 7y ago
I agree with the general sentiment of getting off social media, but I really doubt that wages (adjusted mind you) are at record high levels. As for the rising sea level, thus far not mentioned in this whole branch of the comment tree is the fact that it's going to cost us all money. There have been billions of dollars deployed/invested in port infrastructure. It wouldn't even have to end up being submerged, to become unusable by some number/type of ships. That in turn either requires modifying/rebuilding/relocating (costs money), or reducing/rerouting/cutting off flows of goods (raises prices, costs money). Not that that's a reason to get particularly depressed; the alienation is mostly what's doing that. But the economic precarity doesn't help matters.
- austincheney 7y ago
  I completely agree, but my decisions on the subject would vary in proximity to the immediate distress of the subject and would in no way feature social media.
  - rdiddly 7y ago
    So much the better. You know the more I think about this, social media might be largely responsible both for the alienation that I mentioned, and for exaggerating the seeming proximity and urgency of every crisis (not just the big ones we should care about, but also the little ones that probably have no real effect on us other than as spectators). Both of those (social isolation and a steady stream of bad news imbued with a desperate urgency and importance) would tend to discourage and depress normal human beings!
wickoff 7y ago
Not everybody is that self-aware, I would argue that the majority isn't. You have to look at it from a statistical angle. What percentage of population is capable of not falling prey to sophisticated machine learning algorithms which optimize for engagement rather than the user's well-being? You are still commenting here for some reason. Does this bring any value to your life?
mac01021 7y ago
> Do you own ocean front property or did you just list that for some abstract reason? For one thing, "rising sea levels" is often used as a symbol, representing all the varied consequences of global warming, the most depressing of which may be global ecological turmoil, so you might consider taking it less literally. For another, rising see levels are going to wipe some island countries off the map and displace a quarter of the Bangladeshi population, among other things. It doesn't seem unreasonable to be dismayed by the social unrest that will surely accompany those events.
- instantwhat 7y ago
  > For one thing, "rising sea levels" is often used as a symbol, representing all the varied consequences of global warming, the most depressing of which may be global ecological turmoil, so you might consider taking it less literally. Fascinating. It's good to see someone like you admit the lying. Or maybe you slipped and let your guard down. This is probably a relatively safe place to do so. Average people don't read HN, so they'll never find out. The problem with lying is that there are only two explanations: either your claims can't withstand honest scrutiny, or everyone's too stupid to understand the truth, so you have to fool them. History is littered with atrocities committed by those who believed the latter. In your case, which is it?

Consultant32452 7y ago

Constantly hitting records for economic highs. Lowest unemployment rate for blacks and Hispanics in the history of recorded unemployment rates. Rising wages. Just took a huge step in eradicating HIV in the US by securing free treatment for 200k poor people every year. Between the technological advances in solar/wind/batter, renewed interest in nuclear, and shrinking CO2 it seems climate change is well on its way to being solved. Significant prison reform which should be great for young people, especially minorities. Marijuana is well on its way to becoming legal. Gay marriage was recently made legal across the nation. I'm on the older end of the Millennial generation, and everywhere I look things are heading pretty rapidly in the right direction. Sure, millennials aren't the top political priority, but that age range isn't ever the top priority, so it can't be the cause of this wide spread pessimism. I mostly agree with you about social media, but I would add news and how news interacts with social media. Once the news figured out how to get the most views by really ramping up the hate/anger/fear, and were able to track that to the extreme, it really destroyed the way people get information. Every day is just more rage-bait fueled by this news/social media cohort.

rawrmaan 7y ago
> shrinking CO2 [citation needed] Global CO2 emissions are nowhere near peaking, let alone shrinking.
- challenger22 7y ago
  I imagine GP was referring to US emissions, considering that his other points were US-centric. You are correct globally. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?tab=chart&time=1751..2016 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-... https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
masterj 7y ago
> Between the technological advances in solar/wind/batter, renewed interest in nuclear, and shrinking CO2 it seems climate change is well on its way to being solved Do you realize that the most optimistic projections in climate change papers already assume massive improvements in these technologies? They also assume massive carbon extraction technologies working at global scale that don't exist yet. Even these optimistic scenarios have dire consequences, and we're not on track to hitting these at all. If it were a matter of "small improvements in over time", the tech would be sufficient, but it's more like we need to reduce double digit % of CO2 emissions year over year for the next several decades. https://twitter.com/robbie_andrew/status/1129667484527804418 https://twitter.com/robbie_andrew/status/1129667484527804418 Some countries do have declining CO2 emissions, but the ones that matter: China, India do not. Unless dramatic action is taken, we're still a long ways away from a global peak in CO2 emissions.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

agumonkey 7y ago

we need to cut the internet router, quick

Zarath 7y ago

Police state and mass surveillance are top of my list. Higher than global warming, higher than wealth inequality, higher than incompetent and corrupt governments.

mac01021 7y ago
Why? Concretely, how do you see the police state and mass surveillance impacting your life in a way that is more profound than the effects of global warming etc?

vkou 7y ago

The part where pessimism is listed as a problem is the icing on the cake. Millenials and Gen Z don't want optimism and hope. We want the other generation to be as frustrated and angry as we are. That'd bring about change. Well, quite recently it did, but change in the wrong direction.

Creationer 7y ago

I think the fundamental component is house prices. Our ancestors had much cheaper housing as a multiple of the median wage, and could mostly afford to buy based on the paid labor of the father alone. Those same ancestors are still sticking around, living in those houses, and demanding tribute in the form of medicare and welfare payments (2/3rds of the federal budget). I'm only saying this to spark and extend discussion: but a society in which Euthanasia is mandatory at age 80, with housing and monetary resources freed up for younger generations, is likely to be a happier and better place to live. Alternatively we greatly limit immigration (including cross-border) - to only the most skilled and intelligent immigrants - and we create some kind of huge carrot/stick to get older people out of big houses and into smaller, managed apartments. A comprehensive land value tax, with discounts for families with children under 16, could solve this.

marshray 7y ago
> I'm only saying this to spark and extend discussion Another term for this is 'trolling'.
nullandvoid 7y ago
Why do the young generation have any more a right to these houses than those that have worked all their life to afford one? ( coming from a young person )
- BioMeditate 7y ago
  Don't think it's any kind of "right". All I will say is that we've paid high interest student loans for over 8 years now and equivalent to the cost of small home. We also both worked jobs in college.