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Yesterday, my wife stumbled upon a "20 pieces of good news" article and read it to me. Things like initiatives being taken to save the bees etc. At first I thou

Yesterday, my wife stumbled upon a "20 pieces of good news" article and read it to me. Things like initiatives being taken to save the bees etc. At first I thought it was a bit silly but I realized that hearing all those good things did something wonderful: it made me feel quite optimistic on behalf of the world, which I can't say I have in a while (in spite of my own life going quite well). Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy and I don't want to live in a rose colored bubble but I do think I am going to try and curate my news harder. For now, I started following The Good News Network and The Constructive Institute on Twitter and I will try and look for other similar sources.

mewpmewp2 7y ago
You should read "factfulness". It annoys me when people talk of the current world and time in negative tones when it is best we have ever had by many measurements. Not that we are having a terrible time, but it is cool to think negatively of the world it seems to me.
- smt88 7y ago
  I agree things are better than even, but let's not forget that's on average. Many people still suffer, and even the luckiest of us can see it. People just aren't wired to think about things in terms of population statistics. > people talk of the current world and time in negative tones Are you sure they aren't also considering the trend that we're on? Things are good overall, but China and Russia are not functioning democracies, and most powerful countries are trending away from democracy. > it is cool to think negatively of the world It is cool to be concerned about others who are suffering (and maybe even a status symbol for some), and that concern leads to negative feelings. No one complains about the state of the world insincerely...
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - rnd33 7y ago
    I think the main point I got from Factfullness was not that "the world is getting better stop being so pessimistic", but rather that we are biologically wired to seek bad news and we will automatically try to find the bad angle in everything. This is useful when you're living in a survival situation, not much so in modern society. If you zoom out a bit and look at history from a decade or even century perspective it is ludicrous to say that the world hasn't gotten better, or to say that the positive trend will somehow stop 2020. The trend away from democracy is alarming yes, and we shouldn't ignore it, but there is no way of knowing if it will be a short blip in history (like the trend of Communism 50s-80s) or something more permanent.
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
  > it is cool to think negatively of the world it seems to me. This is one of these temporary fashions, with several factors at play such as Trump rising to power and climate change. But if you take many other into account, such as violent crime from the 80s/90s, we're living in a paradise. As a human, you can handle a limited number of factors. So it really boils down to a personal choice at this point.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > But if you take many other into account, such as violent crime from the 80s/90s, we're living in a paradise. In the US. It's not really a temporary fashion; whatever the time and age, people sensitive to injustice and human suffering will find something systematically broken somewhere. Sure it's cute that violent crimes went down in the West in the 90s, it's less fun that innocent slave labor (including children) was being forced at gunpoint to mine tantalum for the capacitors in 2000s so that we here could have our smartphones, all under tacit approval and sometimes control of western corporations. That's one random story I remember being deeply bothered by in my high school years. So no, I don't think it's a temporary fashion, and nothing to do with Trump or climate change. In every day and age there was something deeply broken somewhere on this planet. But you're right; seeking it out and being bothered about it is a personal choice, and it's an open question whether it's a wise choice - it feels right, but also, if you're not doing anything to help, then it feels like tormenting yourself for no reason.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  The reason for this had always seemed pretty clear to me. Numerous different political ideologies rely heavily on scare mongering, outrage and catastrophizing to motivate their base and inspire followers. Many of the most powerful people or groups around the world have an incredibly vested interest in getting as many people as possible to believe that some particular set of things is very, very wrong with the world, and that they should be granted the power necessary to fix them. A lot of political ideas become obsolete if people realise that the world is a better place than its ever been, and that it continues to improve at a consistent pace.
  - bobokanta 7y ago
    You make such a great point here. Social media has amplified and enabled these groups that relentlessly create outrage and spin everything to suit their worldview to get inside everyone's head. Following or reading the daily news is depressing enough, but social media just makes it worse by forcing me to endure a relentless stream of people reacting to it.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      That’s also a good point. Both social and traditional media profit hugely from outrage and catastrophe. Fear mongering drives a huge amount of clicks...
- edhelas 7y ago
  I also read it. You have to be really careful with lots of the fact given in that book in the end, they focus on some specific numbers that are indeed positive but forget that the general tendency is definitely not going that way. It gives a false sense of "everything is going great". I think that the best example was about the fact that some animal species are actually going back in number (in France we have that with the reintroduction of the wolves in the mountains). They gave a few example with species that had specific plans to protect them. The general fact is that 60% of the insect (not species, the total number of individuals) are gone in 40 years and 52% of the vertebrates in 40 years. By only focusing on those "facts" you are actually not trying to understand the complexity of the current system and missing some really important points that are, indeed, not positive. We are aiming at +4°C, some reports says 6-7°C at the end of the century, that is not something positive and we need to act on that for example.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  "when it is best we have ever had by many measurements" Not really. By an ecologist measuring it is the worst world we have since the last ice age and getting worse every day. So sure, when you don't give a sh*t about nature, you can have your happy bubble of constant happy developement and improvement, but otherwise not. Oh and of course you also have to have a good air filter installed, as air pollution is a real thing too and not linked to good health. And streets and cars and noise is something new, too and also not considered healthy. Burn out and other civilisation diseases exist as well ... Do not misunderstodd, I love technology and I don't like the "back to the trees" solution, as most who propose it, have never spend a full day without running water and emergency phone 24/7, but I also don't like getting blinded by only half of the facts. Yes, thanks to technology we did improve amazingly, but there are many dark sides to it, we have to deal with now.
  - rnd33 7y ago
    Honestly, I'm more concerned that people are blinded by an ignorance of history. If people truly think the average human life was better or 'not that bad' 200+ years ago I don't know what to say. Sure some things are getting worse, but proportionally the average quality of life has MASSIVELY increased in the last 100 years, and is still increasing especially for the poorest people in the world.
  - bprieto 7y ago
    "it is the worst world we have since the last ice age" It isn't. We have more forests now than 35 years ago [1] Ecological footprint is decreasing in Europe [2] Death rates from air pollution are dropping [3] Thanks to technology we can have an amazing quality of life that not even nobility could dream of a hundred years ago, but we are also doing it in a more sustainable way. [1] https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-than-it-did-35-years-ago https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-... [2] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/ecological-footprint-of-european-countries-1/assessment https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/ecologica... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-pollution https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-poll...
  - chimprich 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
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- daxorid 7y ago
  best we have ever had by many measurements The problem with this view is that Easter Island was probably the best it ever was until the last tree was cut down. Of COURSE your standard of living will be the highest it's ever been when you're on the upslope of resource utilization/credit expansion. The few bears/grinches/negative nellies/chicken littles remaining aren't going around proclaiming how terrible things are right now - rather, we're pessimistic about what the future will bring. And we all want to be wrong, but don't think we are.
FrankyHollywood 7y ago
With 8 billion people around something bad is always happening every second. For that reasen I uninstalled all news apps years ago. I'm never bothered with 'breaking news' or anything. I pick a few moments a day to look at some news sites. And I always start with world news, and end with HN, keeps me positive :)
- lonelappde 7y ago
  wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_journalism
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
TeMPOraL 7y ago
I briefly read some "good news" sites years ago, but stopped because they started to depress me as I looked deeper into the individual reports. Most of the stories I've read were of the pattern of, "an inspiring but meaningless TED talk", or "an individual doing something completely inconsequential, but positively-looking", or "an individual or a small group working hard on a project that's completely bogus, but of course it's going to save the world!" (see e.g. solar roadways, uBeam). Note the focus on individuals, and bogus or unimportant work used to generate good feelings. Trust is a finite resource. When constantly abused like this, it's bound to get depleted, and optimism goes down the drain along with it. Personally, I'd like to see some good news reporting, but not like the above. I'd like to see stories about organizations over individuals - about government bureaucracies doing a competent job, about NGOs making an impact. About technology that incrementally progresses and yields results. About actual, not potential or imagined breakthroughs. Something that would stand up to the most basic fact checking, most brief critical skimming; something that would demonstrate that actual good things are being done, that some parts of the system work.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  "something that would demonstrate that actual good things are being done, that some parts of the system work." Well, we can have this conversation spread all over the world. I guess none of us is starving. So I guess, some parts of the system do work. It just works horrible by its own propagated standards.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  Gapminder (of Hans Rosling fame) does a good job of this, I think. Although they do not shy away from mentioning what could be better, they do a good job of highlighting positive developments on a larger time scale that often go overlooked because they're slow-moving.
- amelius 7y ago
  I think that even if we all try to do good things, that would be an improvement regardless of whether we succeed.
- ekianjo 7y ago
Cougher 7y ago
"Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy" Sorry, but I have no such duty. We are free to do or not do as we wish. News media has evolved to make us angry and stressed and to pit us against each other, while encouraging us to come back for more. It's gotten much worse over time. After years of fulfilling my "duty" and forever frustrated that the more I learn, the more obvious it becomes that our problems are intractable the problems because most people are only superficially informed enough to know that the other side is wrong and our side is right. I've sworn it off as it's just an unrelenting source of stress and madness from the left and the right.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > Sorry, but I have no such duty. We are free to do or not do as we wish. Well sure, depending how one thinks about it. From an individualist perspective/philosophy, you're correct. But this is only one of many ways of thinking about the matter. For example, would you advocate an individualist approach such as that for someone who is married with children? Could a similar argument be made for overall mankind? I can agree that it is technically true that we are all individual mammals living on a rock hurtling through space, but I don't think it is also true to say that we are just that. > After years of fulfilling my "duty" and forever frustrated that the more I learn, the more obvious it becomes that our problems are intractable because most people are only superficially informed enough to know that the other side is wrong and our side is right. I can appreciate this perspective, you're certainly "not wrong", or at least not entirely. But consider this perspective: "...the more obvious it becomes that our problems are intractable because most people are only superficially informed enough to know that the other side is wrong and our side is right." Indeed, it seems clearly true that our problems are intractable (not easily governed, managed, or directed; not easily relieved or cured) - but is it conclusively true that they are unsolvable? How many different approaches have we taken thus far toward cracking this nut, really? From where I sit, the majority of activity at both the individual and political levels seem to consist of people criticizing the (perceived) actions and (perceived) beliefs of their out-group, and the overwhelming consensus seems to be something like "if those other people would just start acting according to my philosophy, all these problems would be solved." It seems crystal clear to me that this style of thinking is obviously sub-optimal, but at the same time the vast majority of people seem passionately devoted to it. I wonder, might studying the problem from higher, more abstract perspectives such as this yield some new ideas, and how might this approach gain traction?
ekianjo 7y ago
> Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy Says who? Are we taking votes away from ill-informed people? I don't think so. And even the act of being informed would be a massive task in itself. Where do you start? What does being informed even mean? How much depth is enough? Just following local news in details would take the good part of one's day, so being informed on a much larger level is pretty much an impossible task with the amount of information readily available to us these days.
- dash2 7y ago
  Moral duty, not legal. Parse it as "keeping reasonably informed", not "keeping totally informed".
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    That still does not change that it cannot be achieved easily in all domains you are susceptible to know about.
tcbawo 7y ago
This is the primary reason I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal (while avoiding the opinion section). It focuses on business, usually describing facts without judgement. Also, lacking are the local tragedies and most politics. In general, curating my own content makes a difference in my mood/anxiety levels.

mewpmewp2 7y ago

You should read "factfulness". It annoys me when people talk of the current world and time in negative tones when it is best we have ever had by many measurements. Not that we are having a terrible time, but it is cool to think negatively of the world it seems to me.

smt88 7y ago
I agree things are better than even, but let's not forget that's on average. Many people still suffer, and even the luckiest of us can see it. People just aren't wired to think about things in terms of population statistics. > people talk of the current world and time in negative tones Are you sure they aren't also considering the trend that we're on? Things are good overall, but China and Russia are not functioning democracies, and most powerful countries are trending away from democracy. > it is cool to think negatively of the world It is cool to be concerned about others who are suffering (and maybe even a status symbol for some), and that concern leads to negative feelings. No one complains about the state of the world insincerely...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rnd33 7y ago
  I think the main point I got from Factfullness was not that "the world is getting better stop being so pessimistic", but rather that we are biologically wired to seek bad news and we will automatically try to find the bad angle in everything. This is useful when you're living in a survival situation, not much so in modern society. If you zoom out a bit and look at history from a decade or even century perspective it is ludicrous to say that the world hasn't gotten better, or to say that the positive trend will somehow stop 2020. The trend away from democracy is alarming yes, and we shouldn't ignore it, but there is no way of knowing if it will be a short blip in history (like the trend of Communism 50s-80s) or something more permanent.
dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
> it is cool to think negatively of the world it seems to me. This is one of these temporary fashions, with several factors at play such as Trump rising to power and climate change. But if you take many other into account, such as violent crime from the 80s/90s, we're living in a paradise. As a human, you can handle a limited number of factors. So it really boils down to a personal choice at this point.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > But if you take many other into account, such as violent crime from the 80s/90s, we're living in a paradise. In the US. It's not really a temporary fashion; whatever the time and age, people sensitive to injustice and human suffering will find something systematically broken somewhere. Sure it's cute that violent crimes went down in the West in the 90s, it's less fun that innocent slave labor (including children) was being forced at gunpoint to mine tantalum for the capacitors in 2000s so that we here could have our smartphones, all under tacit approval and sometimes control of western corporations. That's one random story I remember being deeply bothered by in my high school years. So no, I don't think it's a temporary fashion, and nothing to do with Trump or climate change. In every day and age there was something deeply broken somewhere on this planet. But you're right; seeking it out and being bothered about it is a personal choice, and it's an open question whether it's a wise choice - it feels right, but also, if you're not doing anything to help, then it feels like tormenting yourself for no reason.
AmericanChopper 7y ago
The reason for this had always seemed pretty clear to me. Numerous different political ideologies rely heavily on scare mongering, outrage and catastrophizing to motivate their base and inspire followers. Many of the most powerful people or groups around the world have an incredibly vested interest in getting as many people as possible to believe that some particular set of things is very, very wrong with the world, and that they should be granted the power necessary to fix them. A lot of political ideas become obsolete if people realise that the world is a better place than its ever been, and that it continues to improve at a consistent pace.
- bobokanta 7y ago
  You make such a great point here. Social media has amplified and enabled these groups that relentlessly create outrage and spin everything to suit their worldview to get inside everyone's head. Following or reading the daily news is depressing enough, but social media just makes it worse by forcing me to endure a relentless stream of people reacting to it.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    That’s also a good point. Both social and traditional media profit hugely from outrage and catastrophe. Fear mongering drives a huge amount of clicks...
edhelas 7y ago
I also read it. You have to be really careful with lots of the fact given in that book in the end, they focus on some specific numbers that are indeed positive but forget that the general tendency is definitely not going that way. It gives a false sense of "everything is going great". I think that the best example was about the fact that some animal species are actually going back in number (in France we have that with the reintroduction of the wolves in the mountains). They gave a few example with species that had specific plans to protect them. The general fact is that 60% of the insect (not species, the total number of individuals) are gone in 40 years and 52% of the vertebrates in 40 years. By only focusing on those "facts" you are actually not trying to understand the complexity of the current system and missing some really important points that are, indeed, not positive. We are aiming at +4°C, some reports says 6-7°C at the end of the century, that is not something positive and we need to act on that for example.
hutzlibu 7y ago
"when it is best we have ever had by many measurements" Not really. By an ecologist measuring it is the worst world we have since the last ice age and getting worse every day. So sure, when you don't give a sh*t about nature, you can have your happy bubble of constant happy developement and improvement, but otherwise not. Oh and of course you also have to have a good air filter installed, as air pollution is a real thing too and not linked to good health. And streets and cars and noise is something new, too and also not considered healthy. Burn out and other civilisation diseases exist as well ... Do not misunderstodd, I love technology and I don't like the "back to the trees" solution, as most who propose it, have never spend a full day without running water and emergency phone 24/7, but I also don't like getting blinded by only half of the facts. Yes, thanks to technology we did improve amazingly, but there are many dark sides to it, we have to deal with now.
- rnd33 7y ago
  Honestly, I'm more concerned that people are blinded by an ignorance of history. If people truly think the average human life was better or 'not that bad' 200+ years ago I don't know what to say. Sure some things are getting worse, but proportionally the average quality of life has MASSIVELY increased in the last 100 years, and is still increasing especially for the poorest people in the world.
- bprieto 7y ago
  "it is the worst world we have since the last ice age" It isn't. We have more forests now than 35 years ago [1] Ecological footprint is decreasing in Europe [2] Death rates from air pollution are dropping [3] Thanks to technology we can have an amazing quality of life that not even nobility could dream of a hundred years ago, but we are also doing it in a more sustainable way. [1] https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-than-it-did-35-years-ago https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-... [2] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/ecological-footprint-of-european-countries-1/assessment https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/ecologica... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-pollution https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-poll...
- chimprich 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
daxorid 7y ago
best we have ever had by many measurements The problem with this view is that Easter Island was probably the best it ever was until the last tree was cut down. Of COURSE your standard of living will be the highest it's ever been when you're on the upslope of resource utilization/credit expansion. The few bears/grinches/negative nellies/chicken littles remaining aren't going around proclaiming how terrible things are right now - rather, we're pessimistic about what the future will bring. And we all want to be wrong, but don't think we are.

FrankyHollywood 7y ago

With 8 billion people around something bad is always happening every second. For that reasen I uninstalled all news apps years ago. I'm never bothered with 'breaking news' or anything. I pick a few moments a day to look at some news sites. And I always start with world news, and end with HN, keeps me positive :)

lonelappde 7y ago
wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_journalism
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

TeMPOraL 7y ago

I briefly read some "good news" sites years ago, but stopped because they started to depress me as I looked deeper into the individual reports. Most of the stories I've read were of the pattern of, "an inspiring but meaningless TED talk", or "an individual doing something completely inconsequential, but positively-looking", or "an individual or a small group working hard on a project that's completely bogus, but of course it's going to save the world!" (see e.g. solar roadways, uBeam). Note the focus on individuals, and bogus or unimportant work used to generate good feelings. Trust is a finite resource. When constantly abused like this, it's bound to get depleted, and optimism goes down the drain along with it. Personally, I'd like to see some good news reporting, but not like the above. I'd like to see stories about organizations over individuals - about government bureaucracies doing a competent job, about NGOs making an impact. About technology that incrementally progresses and yields results. About actual, not potential or imagined breakthroughs. Something that would stand up to the most basic fact checking, most brief critical skimming; something that would demonstrate that actual good things are being done, that some parts of the system work.

hutzlibu 7y ago
"something that would demonstrate that actual good things are being done, that some parts of the system work." Well, we can have this conversation spread all over the world. I guess none of us is starving. So I guess, some parts of the system do work. It just works horrible by its own propagated standards.
Vinnl 7y ago
Gapminder (of Hans Rosling fame) does a good job of this, I think. Although they do not shy away from mentioning what could be better, they do a good job of highlighting positive developments on a larger time scale that often go overlooked because they're slow-moving.
amelius 7y ago
I think that even if we all try to do good things, that would be an improvement regardless of whether we succeed.
ekianjo 7y ago

Cougher 7y ago

"Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy" Sorry, but I have no such duty. We are free to do or not do as we wish. News media has evolved to make us angry and stressed and to pit us against each other, while encouraging us to come back for more. It's gotten much worse over time. After years of fulfilling my "duty" and forever frustrated that the more I learn, the more obvious it becomes that our problems are intractable the problems because most people are only superficially informed enough to know that the other side is wrong and our side is right. I've sworn it off as it's just an unrelenting source of stress and madness from the left and the right.

mistermann 7y ago
> Sorry, but I have no such duty. We are free to do or not do as we wish. Well sure, depending how one thinks about it. From an individualist perspective/philosophy, you're correct. But this is only one of many ways of thinking about the matter. For example, would you advocate an individualist approach such as that for someone who is married with children? Could a similar argument be made for overall mankind? I can agree that it is technically true that we are all individual mammals living on a rock hurtling through space, but I don't think it is also true to say that we are just that. > After years of fulfilling my "duty" and forever frustrated that the more I learn, the more obvious it becomes that our problems are intractable because most people are only superficially informed enough to know that the other side is wrong and our side is right. I can appreciate this perspective, you're certainly "not wrong", or at least not entirely. But consider this perspective: "...the more obvious it becomes that our problems are intractable because most people are only superficially informed enough to know that the other side is wrong and our side is right." Indeed, it seems clearly true that our problems are intractable (not easily governed, managed, or directed; not easily relieved or cured) - but is it conclusively true that they are unsolvable? How many different approaches have we taken thus far toward cracking this nut, really? From where I sit, the majority of activity at both the individual and political levels seem to consist of people criticizing the (perceived) actions and (perceived) beliefs of their out-group, and the overwhelming consensus seems to be something like "if those other people would just start acting according to my philosophy, all these problems would be solved." It seems crystal clear to me that this style of thinking is obviously sub-optimal, but at the same time the vast majority of people seem passionately devoted to it. I wonder, might studying the problem from higher, more abstract perspectives such as this yield some new ideas, and how might this approach gain traction?

ekianjo 7y ago

> Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy Says who? Are we taking votes away from ill-informed people? I don't think so. And even the act of being informed would be a massive task in itself. Where do you start? What does being informed even mean? How much depth is enough? Just following local news in details would take the good part of one's day, so being informed on a much larger level is pretty much an impossible task with the amount of information readily available to us these days.

dash2 7y ago
Moral duty, not legal. Parse it as "keeping reasonably informed", not "keeping totally informed".
- ekianjo 7y ago
  That still does not change that it cannot be achieved easily in all domains you are susceptible to know about.

tcbawo 7y ago

This is the primary reason I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal (while avoiding the opinion section). It focuses on business, usually describing facts without judgement. Also, lacking are the local tragedies and most politics. In general, curating my own content makes a difference in my mood/anxiety levels.