3 ms·

What if I just don't read/watch the news every day? "Bad things" have happened as a daily occurrence for all of history - it's only now that there's an echo ch

What if I just don't read/watch the news every day? "Bad things" have happened as a daily occurrence for all of history - it's only now that there's an echo chamber and attention economy for this kind of trauma porn. All I'm trying to say is that "Do you want to force someone to live on a planet where things happen which are a daily occurrence on ours?" is a consideration that all of our ancestors had to consider, too.

marcusverus 6y ago
So true. It's easy to think that our contemporary problems are somehow especially dire, but as a species our lives are incomparably better than any generation before. If you were abount to be reincarnated and could pick a decade to be born, knowing that you would be born into a random family somewhere on earth, you'd be a fool to pick any decade in the past. Today, you'd have a ~10% chance of being born into extreme poverty. As recently as 1990, it was ~50%, while back in 1900 it would have been ~90%! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Sorry but a lot of that stuff is due to terrible data analysis, and, dare I say, dubious motives. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-isnt-natural-it-is-created https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-i...
tnzm 6y ago
>"Do you want to force someone to live on a planet where things happen which are a daily occurrence on ours?" is a consideration that all of our ancestors had to consider, too. Is it? Personally, I doubt that people of the past considered reproduction as optional. There are still places where abortion, or even contraception, are illegal. Nor did their decision involve "planet-scale" factors. They either succeeded at raising kids, or failed. Normalization of antinatalism is a relatively recent phenomenon. (Even the spell-checker doesn't know the word!) It's only in modernity that people have the access to information (skewed as it may be), and the freedom (limited as it may be) to make a decision (biased as it may be) about whether to have kids or not. >What if I just don't read/watch the news every day? That'll probably make you more informed, not less.

marcusverus 6y ago

So true. It's easy to think that our contemporary problems are somehow especially dire, but as a species our lives are incomparably better than any generation before. If you were abount to be reincarnated and could pick a decade to be born, knowing that you would be born into a random family somewhere on earth, you'd be a fool to pick any decade in the past. Today, you'd have a ~10% chance of being born into extreme poverty. As recently as 1990, it was ~50%, while back in 1900 it would have been ~90%! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

Ericson2314 6y ago
Sorry but a lot of that stuff is due to terrible data analysis, and, dare I say, dubious motives. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-isnt-natural-it-is-created https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-i...

tnzm 6y ago

>"Do you want to force someone to live on a planet where things happen which are a daily occurrence on ours?" is a consideration that all of our ancestors had to consider, too. Is it? Personally, I doubt that people of the past considered reproduction as optional. There are still places where abortion, or even contraception, are illegal. Nor did their decision involve "planet-scale" factors. They either succeeded at raising kids, or failed. Normalization of antinatalism is a relatively recent phenomenon. (Even the spell-checker doesn't know the word!) It's only in modernity that people have the access to information (skewed as it may be), and the freedom (limited as it may be) to make a decision (biased as it may be) about whether to have kids or not. >What if I just don't read/watch the news every day? That'll probably make you more informed, not less.