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So I don't want to take too much away from what you're saying, because I think it's important to have reality checks from time to time, and you're right. At th

So I don't want to take too much away from what you're saying, because I think it's important to have reality checks from time to time, and you're right. At the same time, there's a numbers game that can be played with this. For example, worldwide refugee status has exploded over the last few decades. People don't become displaced because things are going great. Life expectancy has increased worldwide, but in some places like the US, it's started to decrease again, and birthrate is now below replacement rate. Do we even need to cite environmental statistics? Sure, they're maybe better in the US than in the early 70s but in terms of global effects they're probably worse than in the early 70s. It also seems strange to be talking about genocide given what's going on in Ukraine and other places in the world lately. Things like life expectancy and child mortality are strange too. They were in the better direction circa 1930s-40s and that didn't stop WWII. Sure, things are better than that now but my point is that these discussions are a bit difficult because we as a society don't have a good handle on statistics that matter. As much as I get annoyed with Taleb, I think he has a point that sometimes these kinds of political discussions have a flavor of "look things are great if you just accept my model of the world," ignoring whether the model is correct. I wouldn't say I've lost my faith in humanity; what I would say is that I've been surprised good and bad over the course of my life by how good and bad people can be in general. I also think that it's easy to forget that as good as one person's experience of life has been, so too can someone else's experience be equally bad. Average experiences are somewhat meaningless at some level; I don't think a good life makes a bad life acceptable.

rendall 5y ago
> there's a numbers game that can be played with this The human bias is to pessimism. Sure. The world sucks. It always has and always will. Ukraine is going through hell. I saw a program about miners in Congo whose job is to go down into deep holes, not much wider than their shoulders, that not infrequently cave in and bury them alive. It's good money though, at $5 a day, so, there's that. If the Guardian is to be believed, there are 40 million slaves alive today, more than the entire 250 year history of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Or, maybe, to remain rational, this bias needs an explicit counter. No matter how good things get, we humans will always be prepared to get really depressed about what's not working. There's a war. There are several wars actually. But fewer people by every measure are dying in them. Cold comfort to the guy whose entire family, including his 3 month old baby daughter, died yesterday in Russian missile strike, but, hey, fewer babies dying in war, I can't see that's not something to celebrate.

rendall 5y ago

> there's a numbers game that can be played with this The human bias is to pessimism. Sure. The world sucks. It always has and always will. Ukraine is going through hell. I saw a program about miners in Congo whose job is to go down into deep holes, not much wider than their shoulders, that not infrequently cave in and bury them alive. It's good money though, at $5 a day, so, there's that. If the Guardian is to be believed, there are 40 million slaves alive today, more than the entire 250 year history of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Or, maybe, to remain rational, this bias needs an explicit counter. No matter how good things get, we humans will always be prepared to get really depressed about what's not working. There's a war. There are several wars actually. But fewer people by every measure are dying in them. Cold comfort to the guy whose entire family, including his 3 month old baby daughter, died yesterday in Russian missile strike, but, hey, fewer babies dying in war, I can't see that's not something to celebrate.