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As I see it Roslings optimism stems from looking at changes over tens of years and the progress that’s visible on these timescales.

by pintxo 5y ago

axegon_ 5y ago
I'm pretty sure the events surrounding COVID has undone most of that progress(assuming there's any left at this point). Our survival as a species is incredibly fragile and even more so with social media facilitating propaganda and misinformation. Even in developed countries, the situation is nothing short of depressing.
- Klarios 5y ago
  I thought about this as well and I'm not sure. COVID potentially kills older and more vulnerable people. This might have reduced the burden for some people. Of course payed by death which is never good but perhaps from a statistics point of view in 10 years. I thought about this also when thinking about climate change and I think that might have a much more general bad effect. In a world with a lot of riches (tons of still existing infrastructure) strong weather scenarios can destroy old and critical infrastructure much faster than time. USA only were able to get more budget for infrastructure with Biden and have a huge deficit. COVID is very weird as human life feels very cheap. While lots of people don't want to wear a mask (low effort) to save a life and in parallel we pay so much money as a society when someone has cancer and needs very expensive medication. Let's give that person x access to medical procedures which cost a million and let others die while it would cost us much less to help them.for me personally COVID tanked my general assumption that we would be much more reasonable. Not sure how to determine the loose on trust.
  - axegon_ 5y ago
    The US has a very diversified economy, which certainly limits the damages. There are countries which rely almost entirely on tourism for instance - Spain, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, Greece, they were all severely affected. I am more pointing towards the millions out there who genuinely believe that Bill Gates is behind covid, that covid doesn't exist, that the vaccines contain microchips or are chemicals that destroy your reproductive capabilities. That substantially lowered my survival expectations as species.

As I see it Roslings optimism stems from looking at changes over tens of years and the progress that’s visible on these timescales.

by pintxo 5y ago

As I see it Roslings optimism stems from looking at changes over tens of years and the progress that’s visible on these timescales.

axegon_ 5y ago

I'm pretty sure the events surrounding COVID has undone most of that progress(assuming there's any left at this point). Our survival as a species is incredibly fragile and even more so with social media facilitating propaganda and misinformation. Even in developed countries, the situation is nothing short of depressing.

Klarios 5y ago
I thought about this as well and I'm not sure. COVID potentially kills older and more vulnerable people. This might have reduced the burden for some people. Of course payed by death which is never good but perhaps from a statistics point of view in 10 years. I thought about this also when thinking about climate change and I think that might have a much more general bad effect. In a world with a lot of riches (tons of still existing infrastructure) strong weather scenarios can destroy old and critical infrastructure much faster than time. USA only were able to get more budget for infrastructure with Biden and have a huge deficit. COVID is very weird as human life feels very cheap. While lots of people don't want to wear a mask (low effort) to save a life and in parallel we pay so much money as a society when someone has cancer and needs very expensive medication. Let's give that person x access to medical procedures which cost a million and let others die while it would cost us much less to help them.for me personally COVID tanked my general assumption that we would be much more reasonable. Not sure how to determine the loose on trust.
- axegon_ 5y ago
  The US has a very diversified economy, which certainly limits the damages. There are countries which rely almost entirely on tourism for instance - Spain, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, Greece, they were all severely affected. I am more pointing towards the millions out there who genuinely believe that Bill Gates is behind covid, that covid doesn't exist, that the vaccines contain microchips or are chemicals that destroy your reproductive capabilities. That substantially lowered my survival expectations as species.