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I love how this comment thread perfectly echoes what the article is talking about. From a sibling comment by imtrigued: > Almost a billion are still going hun

I love how this comment thread perfectly echoes what the article is talking about. From a sibling comment by imtrigued: > Almost a billion are still going hungry. "The world is awful" And then from your parent comment: > Are we? Starvation and malnutrition used to be common and is now rare "The world is better" And finally your comment: > it's also true that the world produces enough food such that no ones needs to starve "The world can be much better" These three are all true, and I suspect each person already knew all three. It's just that each person chose to focus on a separate aspect.

gitrog 4y ago
It seems to me that the first two are statements, and the final one is a conclusion, which is the only one that's productive to focus on.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  I think they all achieve different purposes. "The world is awful" highlights a problem that needs solving, a concrete goal "The world is better" tells you that something is working, which you can build on top of or improve "The world can be better" gives a proposal for a course of action While the 3rd might seem like the most useful, the 1st is extremely important too, because if the proposal fails then you need to fall back to thinking about the problem. The 2nd is important for both motivation, and also for promoting incremental progress
  - safety1st 4y ago
    It's a nice narrative but the accuracy of it is questionable, there isn't really some grand historical march away from famine. We've just had a great run from 1980-2020. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-victims-since-1860s_March18.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-victims-si... The situation in 2022 is not good, it will take time to see exactly how bad. Famine correlates very closely with war -- if our recent period of relative global peace comes to an end it will probably return with a vengeance.

gitrog 4y ago

It seems to me that the first two are statements, and the final one is a conclusion, which is the only one that's productive to focus on.

woojoo666 4y ago
I think they all achieve different purposes. "The world is awful" highlights a problem that needs solving, a concrete goal "The world is better" tells you that something is working, which you can build on top of or improve "The world can be better" gives a proposal for a course of action While the 3rd might seem like the most useful, the 1st is extremely important too, because if the proposal fails then you need to fall back to thinking about the problem. The 2nd is important for both motivation, and also for promoting incremental progress
- safety1st 4y ago
  It's a nice narrative but the accuracy of it is questionable, there isn't really some grand historical march away from famine. We've just had a great run from 1980-2020. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-victims-since-1860s_March18.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-victims-si... The situation in 2022 is not good, it will take time to see exactly how bad. Famine correlates very closely with war -- if our recent period of relative global peace comes to an end it will probably return with a vengeance.