38 ms·

I Choose Optimism

145 points by headalgorithm 4y ago

DoreenMichele 4y ago
American homes in 1950 averaged 983 square feet; by 2014, the size had nearly tripled to 2,657 square feet. Today, 91 percent of our homes are air-conditioned. This is not actually a good thing. This is actually a problem.
- salt-thrower 4y ago
  Exactly. The author is living in a middle/upper class suburbian bubble. Bigger and bigger houses that consume more and more resources is a problem, not a sign of progress. It is a glaring sign of the consumerism and resource depletion that is fueling the crisis we're in. There is no amount of renewable energy that will make "average homes are 2,657 square feet and have air conditioning" a sustainable way of living.
  - narcraft 4y ago
    If there hypothetically was a magical source of near infinite renewable energy that could be harnessed without negative side effects, would you be ok with 2600+ sqft homes and air conditioning? I sometimes get the impression that sustainability advocates/environmentalists are more anti-technolgy or anti-human than they are pro-nature and saying things like "there is no amount of renewable energy that will make [enjoyable living standards] a sustainable way of living" doesn't make environmental reforms seem very palatable to me. What number of humans can the Earth ideally sustain in your estimation? If it's substantially less than the current population, then the cure is worse than the disease.
    - DoreenMichele 4y ago
      Air conditioning wasn't really a need in most places historically. Vernacular architecture relied heavily on passive solar design as the default. This uses less energy and also provides superior human comfort.
      - DocTomoe 4y ago
        Coming from Europe, where air conditioning is not really a thing (outside of places of business), yes, you are probably right. It is not a need. But neither is clothing in most parts of the world, or houses larger than a bed, or food that's not oatmeal and the random scavenged fruit. Creature comforts matter. I've been to Morocco lately, with dry 45-48 degrees celsius outside. I've experienced that "vernacular architecture". Every single one of those buildings I have been in (including stalls in the soukh, which is ridiculous because they are essentially missing a wall towards the street) had some form of air conditioning retrofitted. Of course, the tendency of Americans to set their air conditioning to below 20 degrees is ridiculous.
      - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
        It's true, but our life expectancy when air conditioning wasn't used was also a lot lower, and life was very difficult outside a small band of areas with good climates (usually cold climates because until the invention of air conditioning, it was much easier for humans to heat spaces than cool and dehumidify them.) And many people in very humid parts of the world had their lives immensely improved thanks to the aircon. Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, credits [1] the aircon as a core reason for development to even exist in the tropics. American homes are built cheaply (and needlessly sprawly but that's another story) without any heed to ventilation because the US government has put every policy in place possible to make sure energy prices remain low which has removed any market incentive to decrease energy usage, partially because fossil fuel companies spend lots of money lobbying the government. But strategic use of AC in a properly ventilated home is absolutely life-changing. [1]: https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew-air-conditioning https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew...
    - eCa 4y ago
      > "there is no amount of renewable energy that will make [enjoyable living standards] a sustainable way of living" doesn't make environmental reforms seem very palatable to me. Imagine that those environmentalists are correct. Doesn’t advocating for change, palatable or not, make them at their core more pro-human than most? They are, after all, trying to make the human species survive. > If it's substantially less than the current population, then the cure is worse than the disease. If that is the case, then there ain’t no cure that any elected politican can pursue.
      - DocTomoe 4y ago
        > They are, after all, trying to make the human species survive. A perceived "good cause" does not make an argument - or an action - necessarily good. Remember that medieval witch hunts were doing the "humanitarian" thing when they set people aflame because they were trying to save the suspected witches' souls from eternal damnation. > If that is the case, then there ain’t no cure that any elected politican can pursue. ... so have unelected politicians do the dirty work? Just like with every radicalism, radical environmentalism will eventually lead to a less-than-democratic system. I sympathise with the environmental movement, even if I think that there's a lot of doom porn happening there and some people's energies would be better invested looking for workable solutions instead of protesting. But we need to watch them. radicalised, they are likely to become dangerous.
      - curtainsforus 4y ago
        Build nuclear reactors.
    - salt-thrower 4y ago
      > If there hypothetically was a magical source of near infinite renewable energy that could be harnessed without negative side effects, would you be ok with 2600+ sqft homes and air conditioning? Yes. In a world with zero negative externalities for massive resource consumption, then by all means, give everyone a mansion and a yacht. > What number of humans can the Earth ideally sustain in your estimation? If it's substantially less than the current population, then the cure is worse than the disease. In our current industrialized, consumerist, global economy? Far less than 8 billion. You're painting me as a rabid anti-human eco-fascist though, so let me assure you I'm none of those things. I want humanity to succeed and I want all people to be happy and successful. But the current rate of resource extraction and ecological disturbance that we're directly responsible for will drive our species into a brick wall very soon. Along with millions of other species. We will come to a point where we simply cannot extract the energy we need to feed everyone, and where the biosphere has been so damaged that the necessary agriculture yields just won't be there. And also the other things, like the tropics becoming uninhabitable, ocean acidification killing marine life that the food chain depends on, etc. I'm not anti-human, I'm very much a humanist, and pro-nature. Humans are part of nature. Unfortunately, we seem incapable of limiting our consumption to sustainable levels when given the opportunity to overshoot. Or at least our current civilization does (past ones have done better, but they also didn't have to try to resist the temptation of internal combustion engines like we do now). I've lost hope for any political solutions given how lackluster all efforts have been thus far, so we don't really need to sit here and debate solutions, because no one's at the wheel and the brick wall is getting very close. Enjoy the surplus of energy while we can still extract it. TL;DR the famous book "Limits to Growth" was very prescient and it mostly hit the mark.
      - oceanplexian 4y ago
        Before climate change was a thing, Malthus was making the same claims about society hitting a brick wall in the late 18th century. You then had scientists in the 19th century predicting the downfall of society because we would run out of places to store horse manure as more people could afford a horse. In the 20th century intellectuals predicted that the world would run out of food. When that didn’t work, scientists predicted the world would end in nuclear war, with rediculous props like the clock counting down to midnight. That didn’t happen, and there had to be a new boogeyman. Even if we could push a button and solve climate change, I’m sure there would always be a reason why we need to stop having babies, turn back time, and live a subsistence lifestyle (Which is also incredibly racist, since it’s usually directed at people in developing economies, as their standard of living increases). And this is why I don’t believe most of the arguments against big houses, cars, air conditioning, are honest or being made in good faith.
  - tjmc 4y ago
    My house is about that size with air conditioning and we consume less than half the solar energy we produce with a 6.6kW system on the roof - a pretty typical size for Australia. I'm lucky to live in one of the sunnier places in the world, but I don't agree that it's not possible.
  - shepherdjerred 4y ago
    > There is no amount of renewable energy that will make "average homes are 2,657 square feet and have air conditioning" a sustainable way of living. Why not? Do you think it's impossible for energy to become 'to cheap to meter'?
    - oceanplexian 4y ago
      They are also missing the fact that new, large homes are much more efficient. My 3600 sq/ft new construction consumes less energy to heat and cool than the 900 sq/ft 1960s ranch I used to live in, due to more advanced construction techniques, HVAC technology improvements, and better materials science. The same applies to cars. Take something like a Rivian and it’s easily more efficient than a Prius or a subcompact car, while being larger, faster, more performant, and more comfortable. Bigger and more comfortable does not necessarily mean worse for the planet.
    - andrepd 4y ago
      We're not remotely close to being there yet, and there isn't even a clear path. So we should not act like a miraculous technological invention is gonna fall from the sky and save us.
      - shepherdjerred 4y ago
        Sure, I agree that we're nowhere close. The parent comment said that no amount of renewable energy would make larger houses sustainable. That makes me think he believes that the real issue is about land use, building materials for larger houses, or some other point aside from energy. I should've been more direct rather than focusing on the energy point, but I suppose I was hoping the commenter would reply about why energy isn't the problem.
  - piokoch 4y ago
    "There is no amount of renewable energy" - very true, but that only means that renewables are the wrong solution, if they are not able to provide progress and sustainability. If only we had a magic technology that from a small amount of matter can produce a lot of energy! But wait, we have that, for good 60 years, it is called nuclear energy power plant and works great, but, for some reason some people don't like it.
- M3L0NM4N 4y ago
  I mean they objectively provide a better quality of life to people... Not to pick a side, but there's pros and cons to it.
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    To the privileged that can afford it. Meanwhile, global warming is fueling a real need for AC that didn't historically exist in most places and chronic homelessness has become a thing that didn't really exist in the past. We have set the minimum so high that some people simply cannot attain it. Such individuals end up being a net drain on society in many cases due to their lack of housing. Some hospitals have found that simply providing housing to some of their most expensive charity cases saves them money.
    - M3L0NM4N 4y ago
      I think the root cause of homelessness is many things, but it's not the bare minimum cost of living. Not saying CoL isn't high right now, but it's not what's causing the vast majority of homelessness. Poverty? Sure. Homelessness? No.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  If you just mean from a resource / climate change point of view then that's fine but it's a totally different point than personal happiness, optimism etc...
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    I've had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy and studied housing issues. It's a problem because a lack of small residential spaces in walkable neighborhoods is de facto tearing apart our social safety net.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  If you mean we'd all benefit from houses built so that they were comfortable and spacious without requiring constant artificial heating & cooling, and such that we didn't live so far apart from each other that we relied entirely on unwieldy polluting (and dangerous) automobiles to get anywhere we needed to be, then sure. But the replies to your message suggest plenty of people interpret your message as a requirement to sacrifice living standards.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  It also does not mention the distribution and availability of affordable housing. I mean I like to think it's better than it was in 1950, but it's far from perfect - and a country the size of the US with the economy of the US can and should do better for its people.
deleted 4y ago
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archhn 4y ago
You choose homeostasis. Feeeling good about the future makes you feel good. This leads to immediate improvements in one's quality of life. People are attracted to those who have a "positive outlook." No one likes hanging around a doomsayer. This author clearly lives in a place where he can afford such optimism. It's not so easy in the slums of Tanzania.
- M3L0NM4N 4y ago
  I believe feeling good about the future with many specific reasons to feel good about the future is totally valid though. Ask yourself why people in the slums of Tanzania might not be "optimistic about the future". Is it because of their poor current living situation, or is it because they don't see as much of the political, scientific, and social progress being made over time globally? I'd argue it's more likely the latter.
  - archhn 4y ago
    I don't know what's going to happen in the future. No one does. I don't have all the facts. And even if I did, I would need a galaxy brain to integrate them all into an outlook. Not everything is publicized. There are many groups of people who work to further their own agendas. We aren't one globe, one humanity. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't reflect reality. I base my pessimism on the childishness I see flourishing in adults who have lost contact with reality because they've never endured serious hardship. These people can be easily manipulated because they have little fear. They have never made life or death decisions. So they don't understand the significance of forming an accurate model of the world. The result is a nation full of dreamers. Such people are ill adapted to the real world and will naturally be ineffective in all that they do. There are very strong incentives for forming an optimistic outlook. None of these are conditioned on data or serious consideration. I think people look for reasons to justify how they want to feel. In other words, optimism precedes the reasons one has for being optimistic. Voltaire lampooned optimism very well in Candide. His ultimate conclusion was: don't waste your time on idealistic notions of a world in which terrible things are always happening; instead, tend to your garden--do your best to improve what you can and no more. This is a wise suggestion. Optimism and pessimism are both traps. They are pathological extensions of present conditions. I wish I could heed this wisdom...
darkteflon 4y ago
It’s great to recognise what we’ve achieved as a species. And maybe the arc of history has historically bent towards justice. What’s different about this moment in time versus any other in human history is that we face not one but two known existential risks. Climate change is the sort of knotty long-term vs short-term, private vs public, incentives problem that we as a species excel at fucking up. In addition to that, we have a new cold war and the proliferation of nuclear weapons to states that haven’t previously had them and have different ideas about using them. If you’ve read any accounts of nuclear near-misses from the last Cold War, you’ll know that “there was never any real danger” is the wrong conclusion to draw. Respectfully, I don’t understand the case for optimism at all. The fact that the vast majority of people are good (and I believe that they are) has little bearing on it.
- xupybd 4y ago
  It was the same with the last cold war. They were convinced over population would destroy the earth and Russia and America would start throwing Nukes around.
  - randcraw 4y ago
    Unfortunately, the worst days of the cold war were appreciably less likely than we are now to immolate all of mankind. In 1963, the two nations capable of global annihilation were run by “company men” who acted with caution and tons of input from myriad experts who knew the real cost of global war all too well. Those bureaucrats understood that their rash act would end their “life at the top” in a heartbeat, even if they survived nuclear armageddon. But today's strongmen/ dictators who control nuclear weapons have shown far less cluefulness or concern than their forebears for the very plausible dangers of committing a single stupid blunder that could end life on Earth. Hard to be upbeat given that, regardless of appeals to rational technical optimism.
    - xupybd 4y ago
      There are more players now but I don't think the cold war Soviets were as stable as you're arguing here. We've had mad men with nuke since we've had nukes. The more time we spend in that situation the higher the chances someone uses them but I think we're far safer now than times such as the Cuban missile crisis. The Soviets had their nukes on a dead man switch. That was insane and could have killed billions accidentally.
motohagiography 4y ago
Who is going to rebut optimism? But only the part that needs a fair counterweight to it. Consider the evidence that life of all kinds thrives everywhere. It is its very purpose to thrive above all else, or it just ceases. Existence then, necessarily favours a force or direction for life to thrive, even just probabilistically. I would argue that these favourable odds for life to exist and thrive are indistinguishable from an intent for life, for you, to thrive. And this is the rational case for a divine intent. For you, as life, to thrive. Accepting this as an axiom of your existence is all anyone needs to experience the optimism described so well in the article. It's the funniest thing in the world to look back and be wrong about as well.
salt-thrower 4y ago
This article comes across as extremely tone-deaf, and the author seems unaware of the existential scale of the problems humanity is facing. The fact that the phrase "climate change" only appears once - at the beginning, as a throwaway line - really speaks volumes. If the only problems we face were war and rising Christian fascism, I would also be optimistic, because those things can and have been fought successfully in the past. However... The very real situation of climate change, described by leading scientists as "code red for humanity," cannot be waved away by comparing our current struggles to that of medieval peasants seeking freedom from monarchy. We're talking about a collapsing biosphere. We're talking about mass extinction. We're talking about large areas of the Earth becoming functionally uninhabitable. I would even be optimistic about that, too, if world leaders (economic and political) seemed to take any of it seriously. But they don't, so I'm not. And I think the author is conveniently ignoring this entire subject.
- atemerev 4y ago
  Human civilization will survive mass extinctions and change of habitability of some places. Humans are resilient. And if they won’t, life itself is even more resilient.
  - salt-thrower 4y ago
    > And if they won’t, life itself is even more resilient. You realize that's hardly reassuring, right? You're right though - life is resilient. Life has survived worse. But our fragile global civilization, propped up by fossil fuels at a core level, is not resilient in the worst case outcomes of climate change. And keep in mind: in order to avoid the worst case scenarios, massive economic and political change needs to happen. No such changes are happening yet, though. So yeah, I agree that humans and life in general will probably survive, but not in any way that would be recognizable to us now.
    - cercatrova 4y ago
      Humans have still suffered far worse. At one point, around 70kya, there were only an estimated maximum of 10,000 humans, and it is from that population that sprung forth 8 billion today. I highly doubt with even all the damage climate change will cause that we will go back to such numbers.
deltasevennine 4y ago
The media is highly pessimistic. So yeah when you look at the world you are looking at the world through a biased lens of pessimism. Pessimsim draws attention and sells hence the media creates a sort of negative viewpoint of the world. But here's the weird part. Most individuals bias towards optimism. Most people are unable to see the hard truths of the world or even about themselves. The world is indeed cruel and hard and on the individual level people can't admit certain things about themselves. We see the world through rose colored lenses. When people look at the world or news, they think everything is going to shit. But on the individual level when they look at things locally or at themselves, things are actually a bit too positive. People lie to themselves. It's a strange dichotomy. You will note that no one on this thread talks about what goes in between pessimism and optimism. What is the middle ground? That's how deluded everyone is. They read her article and buy into her BS. To be pessimist is to be negatively biased. To be optimist is to be positively biased. Logically the middle ground will then be unbiased. Truth is what lies in between positive and negative biases. I choose to be unbiased. I choose to not be pessimistic or optimistic. I choose truth.
- tforcram 4y ago
  I think pragmatism would be the middle ground, or 'dealing with reality as best you can'. I don't think it's possible to actually sit perfectly in the middle, won't you always end up thinking slightly positively or negatively about whatever situation comes up? In that case I think that 'Expect the best but prepare for the worst' is a good mindset to have.
  - deltasevennine 4y ago
    Consider a rock. Is it negative or positive? It is neither. The rock is proof that you can be neutral. Enlightenment is realizing that everything shares the same nature as a rock.
    - 8note 4y ago
      Now consider the rock that somebody threw at your face, and knocked out your tooth. Is it still neutral? The neutrality is gone as soon as people are involved
davidkuennen 4y ago
I've always been an optimistic person and consider myself to be very happy. People around me who are more pessimistic often seem unhappy. I see no value in beating myself down on things that I cannot control. The world around me is beautiful. I just have to make the best of it day by day. Facing hardships is a natural part of life.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  I think it's like a defense mechanism; it's better to have a constant sense of mild unhappiness than to pretend everything is fine. Because I can see how a lot of people see the subject of this post as a "just think happy thoughts!" kind of advice.
- larsnystrom 4y ago
  I believe many of us who worry about the sustainability of our current society is not really worried about facing hardship, but rather about causing hardship (for future generations). At least that’s true for me. I want to leave this world in the best possible condition for my kids, and cause them as little hardship as possible. However, I’m also trying to not beat myself down over things I cannot control.
- bergenty 4y ago
  I’m optimistic too, not always though. Atleast I know the source on my unhappiness. I just dislike working in a team. I’ve taken a few years off between jobs and those have been the happiest years of my life. I have plenty of hobbies and don’t really get bored anymore. Too bad that’s the one thing in our society you can’t not do.
ARandomerDude 4y ago
> For most of history, people thought: “The world is bad and, usually, it’s getting worse.” In other words, no longer did humans see themselves as mere pawns for the gods. What? Citation needed. A negative view of individual sin is certainly part of the Christian worldview, but gods are not, nor is an overall negative outlook. The whole point is that God loves his people enough to save them, the Church will expand, and Christ will return in glory. If the author is describing paganism ("pawns for the gods") I'm curious to know which of those had an overall negative view with such widespread influence that those religions could describe people generally. Certainly the Greeks and the Romans thought very highly of themselves and believed that the gods were with them, hence they flourished. This seems more like an atheist talking point than anything grounded in history.
- xupybd 4y ago
  I agree however the problem is that you can probably find someone claiming to be Christian that lives as a "pawn for the gods". That kind of legalism slips into peoples lives. Especially the kind of people that are not fully convinced but go along for other reasons. Often these people become strong champions against Christianity, as it's a pretty horrible way to live. If you think that is the way Christianity is supposed to be it's no wonder you'd try to prevent others from living that way. Her statement: "They could bring logic and the scientific method to bear and actually fix things that were bad, wrong, or deadly. That is our inheritance, and a priceless one at that. We were given tools, not answers. But those tools, when properly deployed, transform human lives." Lines up with the Christian purpose for people: "God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground." But we all misunderstand each other all the time. I'm sure I don't fully understand the authors beliefs. I'd love for her to meet some "Christian nationalists" to find out what they really want. I think we all have more common ground than most realize. It's a shame things have become so tribal.
- felipeerias 4y ago
  Perhaps the author is thinking of the many creation myths about an original nearly-divine past. In practical terms, for most of history the large majority of people were farmers and simply thought that the world was just about the same as it had always been. Traditional belief systems were usually structured in terms of cycles, whether the yearly change of the seasons, the growth and decline of a human life, or the silent movements of celestial bodies. Leaving aside great wars or catastrophes, social and economic changes happened slowly and would have been hard to identify by an individual living through them.
throwaway232999 4y ago
Optimism is treatable by revelation of the Keeling Curve.
pochekailov 4y ago
I am commenting in support of optimism and to counterweight pessimistic outlook. Humanity indeed faces a lot of problems. Each of them have many possible solutions (The only one unsolvable is a heat death of the universe). Thing is, the solutions usually may be divided into two categories: technical and societal. For example, for the horse manure problem in big cities there were two possible solutions: invent a car, or limit the number of horses in the city. The thing is: technical solutions are always cool. They open up new possibilities, the one which could not be foreseen. Technical solution also creates new problems, that require solutions of their own. Societal solutions always suck. Societal solution is to make people do less of the thing that causes trouble. The problem therefore kind of resolves, but the life become more boring and less free. Such solution does not bring new possibilities, does not advance life, but there is no risks of unforeseen new problems. Examples of the problems and possible solutions: Global worming: limit consumption and consumerism - or - perform climate engineering (spray high albedo particles in stratosphere, send controllable aluminum foil mirrors to the orbit, install more solar cells and wind turbines Cancer, Alzheimers, heart diseases, obesity, etc.: live "healthy life", eat boring non-tasty grass, die 5 times a week at the gym, don't eat most awesome sugar, don't dring amazing coke, don't smoke, don't enjoy, don't ... - OR - Concentrate on solving the cause of those illnesses, that is the ageing. Treat ageing as a disease and fund anti-ageing research. "Overpopulation": Make people believe that earth is dying and they shouldn't have children - OR - Build habitat (O'Neil cylinders) on the orbit thus opening virtually endless living space Nuclear war: Pacify a horrible dictator, leave him "ways to retreat" - OR - build habitats on the orbit; atomic explosions in space won't do much damage at all (there is a constant atomic explosion already there, called Sun). Hunger: Not a problem, earth agriculture is overproducing; the real problem is horrible dictators and the lack of new land that people can escape to from that dictator.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  I'm not sure if I agree on the dichotomy of technical vs. social solutions. Where would you place something like efforts to increase a population literacy rates? It's not a new technical advantage, but it doesn't suck or limit possibilities. If anything, it creates them, since a literate population is one you can teach to drive, where employers can assume literacy for training purposes, where governments can give information to their people in writing, where people can read their own religious texts without intermediaries, etc.
nicoco 4y ago
I'm surprised not to find any mention of Chomsky here and his "new pascal wager". > Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.
maxbendick 4y ago
In analyzing political pieces (especially one so concerned with The Enlightenment), it's important to go deeper than content. What moved someone to put so much effort into this thought specifically? Nietzsche, critic of enlightenment, would ask: "which kind of will-to-power is expressed here?" Steven Pinker is popular among accomplished people, and there's no conspiracy about this: rational optimism just gets that crowd going. Maybe it's because they don't have much better to worry about! Reading this kind of writing is like eating a bag of candy. I eat one saccharine piece of "{X} good thing has grown by {Y}%", and then I grasp for the next morsel before I've finished chewing the first.
- boxed 4y ago
  This comment is a text book case of projection. Everything written above is 100% true of the comment itself. Critical but without substance. Looks down their nose but not realizing they are lying on their back and actually lookup UP. The original article and Pinker are quite clear: there are HUGE problems to be solved. Theirs is not a philosophy of complacency, but of hard work. REAL hard work that can actually SUCCEED. Unlike complaining, and unlike just ignoring the problem, and unlike pretending everything is getting worse when we know it isn't.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - notahacker 4y ago
    > Pinker are quite clear: there are HUGE problems to be solved That's... not the impression I get from reading Pinker. On the contrary, he has an infuriating habit of presenting "x is getting better" shortly after bashing a straw man version of the groups working hardest to make x better. Everyone from civil rights activists to software developers who worked on on the Millennium Bug were, in Pinker's eyes, committing the cardinal sin of Availability Bias rather than focusing on all those nice comforting trend lines pointing in the right direction.
    - boxed 4y ago
Barrin92 4y ago
>It was optimism that made science take off. No, the title should be "optimism chose me". Articles like this are the product of scientific progress. People don't have ideas, ideas have people. Science took itself off once it got started. (in tandem with capital). It's funny that 'rational optimism', Enlightenment obsessed people stress science and secularism so much. They may not notice it but the framework they're in is fundamentally religious and idealistic, assuming they can move the world in directions they want by thinking the right thoughts. "Appreciation and its close cousin, gratitude, are something we need a lot more of these days. But our gratitude is not for heaven-sent good fortune. It’s for the innumerable positive changes and advancements forged by science," The author is even somewhat self aware of the fact that this sounds suspiciously like worship, but somehow not completely.
Animats 4y ago
Encouraging trends: - Energy is getting fixed. Simply because wind and solar are cheap, and electric vehicles work well. There will be lots of kicking and screaming during the transition, but 20 years out, it won't be a problem. - We seem to be past peak crazyness in major national leaders. Donald Trump is out. Boris Johnson is out. Benjamin Netanyahu is out. Putin remains a problem. - Vaccine technology has made huge strides in recent years. Omicron vaccine ships in October. Broad-spectrum vaccines for most of the flu/coronavirus family are in test. We have a monkeypox vaccine already. Cranking out a designed vaccine for a new threat is now routine. Even an AIDS vaccine, which is really hard, now looks possible. - The supply chain disruptions of the last few years have led to major investments in new manufacturing capacity all over the world. From wafer fabs to fertilizer factories, plants are going up. Having multiple sources is now important again. It takes a while for this to have an effect, after which prices go down. - The population bomb fizzled out. World population is leveling off. All the major developed countries are now below replacement rate.
- BoxOfRain 4y ago
  >- We seem to be past peak crazyness in major national leaders. Donald Trump is out. Boris Johnson is out. Benjamin Netanyahu is out. Putin remains a problem. Not to throw cold water over this too much but Johnson's likely successor is basically him again but without any of the charisma that sold many of the public on him in the first place. Liz Truss is an author of Britannia Unchained which pretty much accuses the British public of being workshy good-for-nothings and bemoans the fact they won't cheerfully volunteer for long hours and exploitative wages. The irony is by Dominic Cummings' account at least Truss is a bit of a chocolate teapot herself! It's said that history repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce, I think Margaret Thatcher might be about to get her farcical repetition in a month or so.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    That's still progress. A crazy leader with charisma is much more dangerous than the same amount of crazy without charisma.
joshthecynic 4y ago
blfr 4y ago
There are two issues with OP. First, is that this optimism is indefinite in words of Peter Thiel. It's gonna be fine but without any directions how to make that future actually happen. Can we just sit and wait? Second, it addresses factors that just aren't important. Doesn’t she know that Christian nationalism has largely taken over the Republican Party and that the Enlightenment values of freedom of inquiry, tolerance, and reason are being threatened from the political Right as well as—to a worrying extent—the political Left? These are downright silly concerns in the world with collapsing birth rates on the verge of a world war with Russia and China trying to use their last gasp for empire building. Living five years longer in a larger house with AC is nothing to sneeze at but perhaps not quite the win in the world of record-breaking obesity and drug addiction. We're trading biological capital for material comforts. And not even at a good exchange rate.
eddyparkinson 4y ago
The book learned optimism covers the value of both optimism and pessimism. He wrote the book to help people become more optimistic. The main thing I learned from the book, is knowing when it is good to be optimistic or pessimistic. There is a time and a place for each. But, on average, optimists tend to win, because they keep trying longer.
int_19h 4y ago
It's hard to be an optimist when it looks like the years we're living in right now are the same future historians will argue about when deciding whether WW3 "actually began" in 2022.
- brainzap 4y ago
  future historians will argue about when deciding whether climate change "actually began" in 2022.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    First things first.
CloseChoice 4y ago
I think it's hard to argue that we DON'T live in an age with the highest life expectancy and material wealth ever (at least for the western countries, but this probably holds around globe). But there are quite a few things we are not good at measuring like mental health, freedom and overall happiness. It the points we can measure are not correlated to the non-measurable points. Though I would deem the non-measurable points even more important. That said, I always choose optimism over so called realism and pessimism. This optimism doesn't mean that anything changes for the better by itself but that personal decisions can have an impact for the better.
Nemrod67 4y ago
Realism is what we need, how can all of those "optimists" be so foolish?
clouddrover 4y ago
Optimism is for children. The attitude you want to cultivate is meliorism. Start with realism and then progress to meliorism. Read Thomas Hardy's poetry. He'll help you understand.
InfiniteRand 4y ago
I’m a bit ambivalent about optimism on the historical scale. History does have examples of things getting worse, it’s hard to pinpoint the cases where it got worse for the majority of earth’s population at once, since different regions sometimes prosper at the time others decline, but there are things like the Bronze Age collapse which are widespread enough to be likely candidates. That particular scenario of civilization collapse I think is unlikely, however it does create the question of whether history always gets better over the long term. And the long term scales of history are long, long enough to make it impossible to tell a definite trend from a possible one if you are looking for meaning behind history. But I am a religious man and I have hope things will stay on the uptrend in some way. I think a CB lot of faith in history is ultimately a matter of faith, one with arguments behind it but I don’t think those arguments are bulletproof
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pessimizer 4y ago
People who choose what they believe have an entirely different understanding of the concept of belief than I do. Belief is something that is inflicted upon me by my environment, not something I choose based on the lifestyle I want or the people I want to associate with. Consumer belief? If I could choose my beliefs, I would choose to believe in an almost completely different set of things. All of my beliefs would be self-serving, I'd be really happy about how everything was going every day. The reason I can't do this is because it would be really damaging to the people around me, and to society. I can't choose to ignore that.
- jason-phillips 4y ago
  While I appreciate your perspective, the construct you described allows one to invalidate others' beliefs as being "wrong" because they don't adhere to the same reference point as yourself. > All of my beliefs would be self-serving This is not a true statement. Why cannot one choose what one feels to be the most appropriate construct after careful inspection and introspection?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Once you realize you know way less about everything than you thought you did, and much of what is “known” is future conjectures with many parts, you realize you can select the optimistic view.
  - actionablefiber 4y ago
    I'm not sure I follow. I agree with what GP wrote. Their second paragraph is written in the first person. It's not a claim that everyone would do the self-serving thing. I would do the same as GP. I'd choose a set of beliefs that help me sleep at night and that make me a hoot at dinner parties instead of a Debbie Downer. I can't simply choose to do that, because those beliefs come from my experience with and observations of the world along with my deeply-held values.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
pelasaco 4y ago
Pandemic, War and Famine Probably until 2019 in some places on earth, the author was absolute right. Let's wait until the Fall/Winter to see.
fuzzfactor 4y ago
Well deep in the hillbilly country they still tell the story of the little blacksmith who was way back in the mountains and was very lonely. He was not even 5 feet tall but he was strong and handsome and did his work well but all the girls in his community had overlooked him and were already married. One day a beautiful lady from a nearby mountain comes into his shop and needs new hinges for her daddy's barn door. The little blacksmith thinks she's attractive even though she's well over 6 feet tall, and he eagerly agrees to do an outstanding job. She's quite agreeable herself and he asks her if she's married, and she is not. So he asks if he can come and call on her in the future and she said that would be alright and she bent down and kissed him right on the cheek. He hopped right up on his anvil and kissed her back and she said good-by until the next day when she will pick up the hinges. On the next day she came back and before she was going to leave he invited her to take a look around his part of the mountain a little bit, they went to where he had a wonderful garden, the birds were singing, it was so romantic. He looked up into her eyes and sincerely told her how much he was thinking of another kiss. She was a little too bashful right then and told him to wait until the weekend when he could be her date at the barn dance. He understood, and couldn't complain, so he said "well if there's not going to be any more kissin' today, I think I'll put this anvil down."
WhyDoIThink 4y ago
I'm convinced this article's poster never learned about native American history properly. America never had democracy. It has always been a totalitarian country that only benefits upper-class white men who profitably kill and bully people. Authoritarianism was never on the rise. Freedom is an illusion. The American dream is a scam. The C.I.A. targets black people more than white people. The C.I.A. created political coups to bully countries for creating dehumanizing sweatshops that have child slavery. The C.I.A. agents rape people. America's prisons are created to trap working class Americans into poverty, drug abuse, and insanity. America's cops are required to have poor intelligence and low empathy to benefit very rich oligarchs only. America's rulers are attacking free speech and union workers to keep working class Americans enslaved. America's rulers intentionally created broken education systems to enslave working class Americans. America's rulers want working class Americans selling their souls to the American military instead of creating a peaceful world based on reason rather than greedy violence. America's rulers are not interested in creating a society where everyone is compassionate critical thinkers. They are interested in creating mind-controlled weapons living in poverty that make our world burn for profit. It's Sociopathic Capitalism 101.
Comevius 4y ago
Humans no longer seeing themselves as the pawns of nature is nothing to be proud of. We still depend on nature, nothing have changed, only this dependence is now obfuscated. There is a buffer between us and nature, which makes us utterly blind to the consequences of our actions. We are not living in the best of times, we are living the biggest lie ever. Our way of life is utterly unsustainable, and by our way of life I mean us the upper 10% that gets to reap 90% of the benefits. Robyn E. Blumner did not choose optimism, she choose ignorance, because she is among the priviledged few who can be freely ignorant. Optimism is not a choice in any case. We are biologically inclined to be optimistic, even when we are fatalistic, in which case we are optimistic about a negative outcome. This is a cognitive limitation, not something to be proud of.
- samsquire 4y ago
  Society decided we wanted good things and we took action to get those things. I am against poverty and not having things such as electricity and clean tap water, abundant food, education, hospital care, sewage treatment and proper waste disposal. I like these things, they are good. You would be surprised at how sustainable things are by sheer hard work and will. In other words, we get what we cause. The alternative to these things is worse. To be sustainable (no or renewable electricity, sparse population, no cars, no factories, no meat, land used for growing food) you need to remove the things society wants by sheer will. And I don't think you'll sell anybody on that. In other words, telling people that they need to give up good things is not enough.
  - mrtesthah 4y ago
    That’s a false dichotomy; we can have all these things without burning down rainforests at a furious pace and filling the oceans with plastic, etc. These things are done out of laziness and carelessness.
    - samsquire 4y ago
      I don't think it's false but it might be a dichotomy. The good things we enjoy are destructive and have externalities. To offer a solution, if the people who do bad things such as not dispose waste properly or want to cut down rainforests for profit, we need to solve the incentives behind those decisions. Such as universal basic income. Or lowering crime. Unfortunately poverty is the baseline. In other words you need to expend resources to get resources. I said in my comment things are sustainable by sheer will. To implement sustainability we need to invest profound amounts of resources and do extreme amounts of work by sheer will to solve the problem. We also need the right people working on these problems. The smartest people from my simple perspective are working on the wrong problems. What we have is an improper allocation of limited resources.
mrandish 4y ago
It's easy (and popular) to be a pessimist but when I look at objective global data on decade+ time scales, the only rational conclusion is that things are generally getting better for more people in more places than ever before (data like global poverty, infant mortality, literacy, etc). That doesn't mean we don't still have a ways to go and it certainly doesn't mean that things aren't terrible for some people in some places at any given moment. Addressing those things for those people in those places should certainly be a top priority but we shouldn't let that blind us to the broader reality that by most standardized, objective measures things are mostly getting better for more people more of the time.
- adrianN 4y ago
  The economy gets better for more people in more places than ever before. Environmental destruction is also progressing faster than ever before. Many crucial ecosystems are on the brink of collapse (e.g. the rainforests) and we show no signs of intending to protect them.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Media doesn't report good things that happen in the environment. From 2013-2019, they hammered constantly on how the Great Barrier Reef was dying. But, not a peep when they found that it is healthiest its ever been in recent history: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/parts-australias-great-barrier-reef-show-highest-coral-cover-36-years-2022-08-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/parts-australia... No wonder the trust in media has fallen to the lowest. Reuters/AP are informative as a root source, but I have stopped trusting environmentalist doom-and-gloom stories from MSM. Environment is going to get far worse though. Germany is busy burning the shittiest form of coal as its primary fuel (35%): Lignite coal with 1/5th water content. It is the worse than burning literally anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany Again, thanks to the utterly idiotic emotionally-driven environmentalists that are going to make the planet worse ironically. We need to stop giving them fodder and look to the tech/engineering community for solutions.
Grim-444 4y ago
The author comes across as the extremely echo-chambered, brainwashed, close-minded person she herself is afraid of. I couldn't invent a more on brand characterization of person with a heavily biased/politicized/skewed worldview if I tried.

145 points by headalgorithm 4y ago

American homes in 1950 averaged 983 square feet; by 2014, the size had nearly tripled to 2,657 square feet. Today, 91 percent of our homes are air-conditioned. This is not actually a good thing. This is actually a problem.

salt-thrower 4y ago
Exactly. The author is living in a middle/upper class suburbian bubble. Bigger and bigger houses that consume more and more resources is a problem, not a sign of progress. It is a glaring sign of the consumerism and resource depletion that is fueling the crisis we're in. There is no amount of renewable energy that will make "average homes are 2,657 square feet and have air conditioning" a sustainable way of living.
- narcraft 4y ago
  If there hypothetically was a magical source of near infinite renewable energy that could be harnessed without negative side effects, would you be ok with 2600+ sqft homes and air conditioning? I sometimes get the impression that sustainability advocates/environmentalists are more anti-technolgy or anti-human than they are pro-nature and saying things like "there is no amount of renewable energy that will make [enjoyable living standards] a sustainable way of living" doesn't make environmental reforms seem very palatable to me. What number of humans can the Earth ideally sustain in your estimation? If it's substantially less than the current population, then the cure is worse than the disease.
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    Air conditioning wasn't really a need in most places historically. Vernacular architecture relied heavily on passive solar design as the default. This uses less energy and also provides superior human comfort.
    - DocTomoe 4y ago
      Coming from Europe, where air conditioning is not really a thing (outside of places of business), yes, you are probably right. It is not a need. But neither is clothing in most parts of the world, or houses larger than a bed, or food that's not oatmeal and the random scavenged fruit. Creature comforts matter. I've been to Morocco lately, with dry 45-48 degrees celsius outside. I've experienced that "vernacular architecture". Every single one of those buildings I have been in (including stalls in the soukh, which is ridiculous because they are essentially missing a wall towards the street) had some form of air conditioning retrofitted. Of course, the tendency of Americans to set their air conditioning to below 20 degrees is ridiculous.
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
      It's true, but our life expectancy when air conditioning wasn't used was also a lot lower, and life was very difficult outside a small band of areas with good climates (usually cold climates because until the invention of air conditioning, it was much easier for humans to heat spaces than cool and dehumidify them.) And many people in very humid parts of the world had their lives immensely improved thanks to the aircon. Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, credits [1] the aircon as a core reason for development to even exist in the tropics. American homes are built cheaply (and needlessly sprawly but that's another story) without any heed to ventilation because the US government has put every policy in place possible to make sure energy prices remain low which has removed any market incentive to decrease energy usage, partially because fossil fuel companies spend lots of money lobbying the government. But strategic use of AC in a properly ventilated home is absolutely life-changing. [1]: https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew-air-conditioning https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew...
  - eCa 4y ago
    > "there is no amount of renewable energy that will make [enjoyable living standards] a sustainable way of living" doesn't make environmental reforms seem very palatable to me. Imagine that those environmentalists are correct. Doesn’t advocating for change, palatable or not, make them at their core more pro-human than most? They are, after all, trying to make the human species survive. > If it's substantially less than the current population, then the cure is worse than the disease. If that is the case, then there ain’t no cure that any elected politican can pursue.
    - DocTomoe 4y ago
      > They are, after all, trying to make the human species survive. A perceived "good cause" does not make an argument - or an action - necessarily good. Remember that medieval witch hunts were doing the "humanitarian" thing when they set people aflame because they were trying to save the suspected witches' souls from eternal damnation. > If that is the case, then there ain’t no cure that any elected politican can pursue. ... so have unelected politicians do the dirty work? Just like with every radicalism, radical environmentalism will eventually lead to a less-than-democratic system. I sympathise with the environmental movement, even if I think that there's a lot of doom porn happening there and some people's energies would be better invested looking for workable solutions instead of protesting. But we need to watch them. radicalised, they are likely to become dangerous.
    - curtainsforus 4y ago
      Build nuclear reactors.
  - salt-thrower 4y ago
    > If there hypothetically was a magical source of near infinite renewable energy that could be harnessed without negative side effects, would you be ok with 2600+ sqft homes and air conditioning? Yes. In a world with zero negative externalities for massive resource consumption, then by all means, give everyone a mansion and a yacht. > What number of humans can the Earth ideally sustain in your estimation? If it's substantially less than the current population, then the cure is worse than the disease. In our current industrialized, consumerist, global economy? Far less than 8 billion. You're painting me as a rabid anti-human eco-fascist though, so let me assure you I'm none of those things. I want humanity to succeed and I want all people to be happy and successful. But the current rate of resource extraction and ecological disturbance that we're directly responsible for will drive our species into a brick wall very soon. Along with millions of other species. We will come to a point where we simply cannot extract the energy we need to feed everyone, and where the biosphere has been so damaged that the necessary agriculture yields just won't be there. And also the other things, like the tropics becoming uninhabitable, ocean acidification killing marine life that the food chain depends on, etc. I'm not anti-human, I'm very much a humanist, and pro-nature. Humans are part of nature. Unfortunately, we seem incapable of limiting our consumption to sustainable levels when given the opportunity to overshoot. Or at least our current civilization does (past ones have done better, but they also didn't have to try to resist the temptation of internal combustion engines like we do now). I've lost hope for any political solutions given how lackluster all efforts have been thus far, so we don't really need to sit here and debate solutions, because no one's at the wheel and the brick wall is getting very close. Enjoy the surplus of energy while we can still extract it. TL;DR the famous book "Limits to Growth" was very prescient and it mostly hit the mark.
    - oceanplexian 4y ago
      Before climate change was a thing, Malthus was making the same claims about society hitting a brick wall in the late 18th century. You then had scientists in the 19th century predicting the downfall of society because we would run out of places to store horse manure as more people could afford a horse. In the 20th century intellectuals predicted that the world would run out of food. When that didn’t work, scientists predicted the world would end in nuclear war, with rediculous props like the clock counting down to midnight. That didn’t happen, and there had to be a new boogeyman. Even if we could push a button and solve climate change, I’m sure there would always be a reason why we need to stop having babies, turn back time, and live a subsistence lifestyle (Which is also incredibly racist, since it’s usually directed at people in developing economies, as their standard of living increases). And this is why I don’t believe most of the arguments against big houses, cars, air conditioning, are honest or being made in good faith.
- tjmc 4y ago
  My house is about that size with air conditioning and we consume less than half the solar energy we produce with a 6.6kW system on the roof - a pretty typical size for Australia. I'm lucky to live in one of the sunnier places in the world, but I don't agree that it's not possible.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  > There is no amount of renewable energy that will make "average homes are 2,657 square feet and have air conditioning" a sustainable way of living. Why not? Do you think it's impossible for energy to become 'to cheap to meter'?
  - oceanplexian 4y ago
    They are also missing the fact that new, large homes are much more efficient. My 3600 sq/ft new construction consumes less energy to heat and cool than the 900 sq/ft 1960s ranch I used to live in, due to more advanced construction techniques, HVAC technology improvements, and better materials science. The same applies to cars. Take something like a Rivian and it’s easily more efficient than a Prius or a subcompact car, while being larger, faster, more performant, and more comfortable. Bigger and more comfortable does not necessarily mean worse for the planet.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    We're not remotely close to being there yet, and there isn't even a clear path. So we should not act like a miraculous technological invention is gonna fall from the sky and save us.
    - shepherdjerred 4y ago
      Sure, I agree that we're nowhere close. The parent comment said that no amount of renewable energy would make larger houses sustainable. That makes me think he believes that the real issue is about land use, building materials for larger houses, or some other point aside from energy. I should've been more direct rather than focusing on the energy point, but I suppose I was hoping the commenter would reply about why energy isn't the problem.
- piokoch 4y ago
  "There is no amount of renewable energy" - very true, but that only means that renewables are the wrong solution, if they are not able to provide progress and sustainability. If only we had a magic technology that from a small amount of matter can produce a lot of energy! But wait, we have that, for good 60 years, it is called nuclear energy power plant and works great, but, for some reason some people don't like it.
M3L0NM4N 4y ago
I mean they objectively provide a better quality of life to people... Not to pick a side, but there's pros and cons to it.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  To the privileged that can afford it. Meanwhile, global warming is fueling a real need for AC that didn't historically exist in most places and chronic homelessness has become a thing that didn't really exist in the past. We have set the minimum so high that some people simply cannot attain it. Such individuals end up being a net drain on society in many cases due to their lack of housing. Some hospitals have found that simply providing housing to some of their most expensive charity cases saves them money.
  - M3L0NM4N 4y ago
    I think the root cause of homelessness is many things, but it's not the bare minimum cost of living. Not saying CoL isn't high right now, but it's not what's causing the vast majority of homelessness. Poverty? Sure. Homelessness? No.
LatteLazy 4y ago
If you just mean from a resource / climate change point of view then that's fine but it's a totally different point than personal happiness, optimism etc...
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  I've had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy and studied housing issues. It's a problem because a lack of small residential spaces in walkable neighborhoods is de facto tearing apart our social safety net.
wizofaus 4y ago
If you mean we'd all benefit from houses built so that they were comfortable and spacious without requiring constant artificial heating & cooling, and such that we didn't live so far apart from each other that we relied entirely on unwieldy polluting (and dangerous) automobiles to get anywhere we needed to be, then sure. But the replies to your message suggest plenty of people interpret your message as a requirement to sacrifice living standards.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
It also does not mention the distribution and availability of affordable housing. I mean I like to think it's better than it was in 1950, but it's far from perfect - and a country the size of the US with the economy of the US can and should do better for its people.

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archhn 4y ago

You choose homeostasis. Feeeling good about the future makes you feel good. This leads to immediate improvements in one's quality of life. People are attracted to those who have a "positive outlook." No one likes hanging around a doomsayer. This author clearly lives in a place where he can afford such optimism. It's not so easy in the slums of Tanzania.

M3L0NM4N 4y ago
I believe feeling good about the future with many specific reasons to feel good about the future is totally valid though. Ask yourself why people in the slums of Tanzania might not be "optimistic about the future". Is it because of their poor current living situation, or is it because they don't see as much of the political, scientific, and social progress being made over time globally? I'd argue it's more likely the latter.
- archhn 4y ago
  I don't know what's going to happen in the future. No one does. I don't have all the facts. And even if I did, I would need a galaxy brain to integrate them all into an outlook. Not everything is publicized. There are many groups of people who work to further their own agendas. We aren't one globe, one humanity. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't reflect reality. I base my pessimism on the childishness I see flourishing in adults who have lost contact with reality because they've never endured serious hardship. These people can be easily manipulated because they have little fear. They have never made life or death decisions. So they don't understand the significance of forming an accurate model of the world. The result is a nation full of dreamers. Such people are ill adapted to the real world and will naturally be ineffective in all that they do. There are very strong incentives for forming an optimistic outlook. None of these are conditioned on data or serious consideration. I think people look for reasons to justify how they want to feel. In other words, optimism precedes the reasons one has for being optimistic. Voltaire lampooned optimism very well in Candide. His ultimate conclusion was: don't waste your time on idealistic notions of a world in which terrible things are always happening; instead, tend to your garden--do your best to improve what you can and no more. This is a wise suggestion. Optimism and pessimism are both traps. They are pathological extensions of present conditions. I wish I could heed this wisdom...

darkteflon 4y ago

It’s great to recognise what we’ve achieved as a species. And maybe the arc of history has historically bent towards justice. What’s different about this moment in time versus any other in human history is that we face not one but two known existential risks. Climate change is the sort of knotty long-term vs short-term, private vs public, incentives problem that we as a species excel at fucking up. In addition to that, we have a new cold war and the proliferation of nuclear weapons to states that haven’t previously had them and have different ideas about using them. If you’ve read any accounts of nuclear near-misses from the last Cold War, you’ll know that “there was never any real danger” is the wrong conclusion to draw. Respectfully, I don’t understand the case for optimism at all. The fact that the vast majority of people are good (and I believe that they are) has little bearing on it.

xupybd 4y ago
It was the same with the last cold war. They were convinced over population would destroy the earth and Russia and America would start throwing Nukes around.
- randcraw 4y ago
  Unfortunately, the worst days of the cold war were appreciably less likely than we are now to immolate all of mankind. In 1963, the two nations capable of global annihilation were run by “company men” who acted with caution and tons of input from myriad experts who knew the real cost of global war all too well. Those bureaucrats understood that their rash act would end their “life at the top” in a heartbeat, even if they survived nuclear armageddon. But today's strongmen/ dictators who control nuclear weapons have shown far less cluefulness or concern than their forebears for the very plausible dangers of committing a single stupid blunder that could end life on Earth. Hard to be upbeat given that, regardless of appeals to rational technical optimism.
  - xupybd 4y ago
    There are more players now but I don't think the cold war Soviets were as stable as you're arguing here. We've had mad men with nuke since we've had nukes. The more time we spend in that situation the higher the chances someone uses them but I think we're far safer now than times such as the Cuban missile crisis. The Soviets had their nukes on a dead man switch. That was insane and could have killed billions accidentally.

motohagiography 4y ago

Who is going to rebut optimism? But only the part that needs a fair counterweight to it. Consider the evidence that life of all kinds thrives everywhere. It is its very purpose to thrive above all else, or it just ceases. Existence then, necessarily favours a force or direction for life to thrive, even just probabilistically. I would argue that these favourable odds for life to exist and thrive are indistinguishable from an intent for life, for you, to thrive. And this is the rational case for a divine intent. For you, as life, to thrive. Accepting this as an axiom of your existence is all anyone needs to experience the optimism described so well in the article. It's the funniest thing in the world to look back and be wrong about as well.

salt-thrower 4y ago

This article comes across as extremely tone-deaf, and the author seems unaware of the existential scale of the problems humanity is facing. The fact that the phrase "climate change" only appears once - at the beginning, as a throwaway line - really speaks volumes. If the only problems we face were war and rising Christian fascism, I would also be optimistic, because those things can and have been fought successfully in the past. However... The very real situation of climate change, described by leading scientists as "code red for humanity," cannot be waved away by comparing our current struggles to that of medieval peasants seeking freedom from monarchy. We're talking about a collapsing biosphere. We're talking about mass extinction. We're talking about large areas of the Earth becoming functionally uninhabitable. I would even be optimistic about that, too, if world leaders (economic and political) seemed to take any of it seriously. But they don't, so I'm not. And I think the author is conveniently ignoring this entire subject.

atemerev 4y ago
Human civilization will survive mass extinctions and change of habitability of some places. Humans are resilient. And if they won’t, life itself is even more resilient.
- salt-thrower 4y ago
  > And if they won’t, life itself is even more resilient. You realize that's hardly reassuring, right? You're right though - life is resilient. Life has survived worse. But our fragile global civilization, propped up by fossil fuels at a core level, is not resilient in the worst case outcomes of climate change. And keep in mind: in order to avoid the worst case scenarios, massive economic and political change needs to happen. No such changes are happening yet, though. So yeah, I agree that humans and life in general will probably survive, but not in any way that would be recognizable to us now.
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    Humans have still suffered far worse. At one point, around 70kya, there were only an estimated maximum of 10,000 humans, and it is from that population that sprung forth 8 billion today. I highly doubt with even all the damage climate change will cause that we will go back to such numbers.

deltasevennine 4y ago

The media is highly pessimistic. So yeah when you look at the world you are looking at the world through a biased lens of pessimism. Pessimsim draws attention and sells hence the media creates a sort of negative viewpoint of the world. But here's the weird part. Most individuals bias towards optimism. Most people are unable to see the hard truths of the world or even about themselves. The world is indeed cruel and hard and on the individual level people can't admit certain things about themselves. We see the world through rose colored lenses. When people look at the world or news, they think everything is going to shit. But on the individual level when they look at things locally or at themselves, things are actually a bit too positive. People lie to themselves. It's a strange dichotomy. You will note that no one on this thread talks about what goes in between pessimism and optimism. What is the middle ground? That's how deluded everyone is. They read her article and buy into her BS. To be pessimist is to be negatively biased. To be optimist is to be positively biased. Logically the middle ground will then be unbiased. Truth is what lies in between positive and negative biases. I choose to be unbiased. I choose to not be pessimistic or optimistic. I choose truth.

tforcram 4y ago
I think pragmatism would be the middle ground, or 'dealing with reality as best you can'. I don't think it's possible to actually sit perfectly in the middle, won't you always end up thinking slightly positively or negatively about whatever situation comes up? In that case I think that 'Expect the best but prepare for the worst' is a good mindset to have.
- deltasevennine 4y ago
  Consider a rock. Is it negative or positive? It is neither. The rock is proof that you can be neutral. Enlightenment is realizing that everything shares the same nature as a rock.
  - 8note 4y ago
    Now consider the rock that somebody threw at your face, and knocked out your tooth. Is it still neutral? The neutrality is gone as soon as people are involved

davidkuennen 4y ago

I've always been an optimistic person and consider myself to be very happy. People around me who are more pessimistic often seem unhappy. I see no value in beating myself down on things that I cannot control. The world around me is beautiful. I just have to make the best of it day by day. Facing hardships is a natural part of life.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I think it's like a defense mechanism; it's better to have a constant sense of mild unhappiness than to pretend everything is fine. Because I can see how a lot of people see the subject of this post as a "just think happy thoughts!" kind of advice.
larsnystrom 4y ago
I believe many of us who worry about the sustainability of our current society is not really worried about facing hardship, but rather about causing hardship (for future generations). At least that’s true for me. I want to leave this world in the best possible condition for my kids, and cause them as little hardship as possible. However, I’m also trying to not beat myself down over things I cannot control.
bergenty 4y ago
I’m optimistic too, not always though. Atleast I know the source on my unhappiness. I just dislike working in a team. I’ve taken a few years off between jobs and those have been the happiest years of my life. I have plenty of hobbies and don’t really get bored anymore. Too bad that’s the one thing in our society you can’t not do.

ARandomerDude 4y ago

> For most of history, people thought: “The world is bad and, usually, it’s getting worse.” In other words, no longer did humans see themselves as mere pawns for the gods. What? Citation needed. A negative view of individual sin is certainly part of the Christian worldview, but gods are not, nor is an overall negative outlook. The whole point is that God loves his people enough to save them, the Church will expand, and Christ will return in glory. If the author is describing paganism ("pawns for the gods") I'm curious to know which of those had an overall negative view with such widespread influence that those religions could describe people generally. Certainly the Greeks and the Romans thought very highly of themselves and believed that the gods were with them, hence they flourished. This seems more like an atheist talking point than anything grounded in history.

xupybd 4y ago
I agree however the problem is that you can probably find someone claiming to be Christian that lives as a "pawn for the gods". That kind of legalism slips into peoples lives. Especially the kind of people that are not fully convinced but go along for other reasons. Often these people become strong champions against Christianity, as it's a pretty horrible way to live. If you think that is the way Christianity is supposed to be it's no wonder you'd try to prevent others from living that way. Her statement: "They could bring logic and the scientific method to bear and actually fix things that were bad, wrong, or deadly. That is our inheritance, and a priceless one at that. We were given tools, not answers. But those tools, when properly deployed, transform human lives." Lines up with the Christian purpose for people: "God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground." But we all misunderstand each other all the time. I'm sure I don't fully understand the authors beliefs. I'd love for her to meet some "Christian nationalists" to find out what they really want. I think we all have more common ground than most realize. It's a shame things have become so tribal.
felipeerias 4y ago
Perhaps the author is thinking of the many creation myths about an original nearly-divine past. In practical terms, for most of history the large majority of people were farmers and simply thought that the world was just about the same as it had always been. Traditional belief systems were usually structured in terms of cycles, whether the yearly change of the seasons, the growth and decline of a human life, or the silent movements of celestial bodies. Leaving aside great wars or catastrophes, social and economic changes happened slowly and would have been hard to identify by an individual living through them.

throwaway232999 4y ago

Optimism is treatable by revelation of the Keeling Curve.

pochekailov 4y ago

I am commenting in support of optimism and to counterweight pessimistic outlook. Humanity indeed faces a lot of problems. Each of them have many possible solutions (The only one unsolvable is a heat death of the universe). Thing is, the solutions usually may be divided into two categories: technical and societal. For example, for the horse manure problem in big cities there were two possible solutions: invent a car, or limit the number of horses in the city. The thing is: technical solutions are always cool. They open up new possibilities, the one which could not be foreseen. Technical solution also creates new problems, that require solutions of their own. Societal solutions always suck. Societal solution is to make people do less of the thing that causes trouble. The problem therefore kind of resolves, but the life become more boring and less free. Such solution does not bring new possibilities, does not advance life, but there is no risks of unforeseen new problems. Examples of the problems and possible solutions: Global worming: limit consumption and consumerism - or - perform climate engineering (spray high albedo particles in stratosphere, send controllable aluminum foil mirrors to the orbit, install more solar cells and wind turbines Cancer, Alzheimers, heart diseases, obesity, etc.: live "healthy life", eat boring non-tasty grass, die 5 times a week at the gym, don't eat most awesome sugar, don't dring amazing coke, don't smoke, don't enjoy, don't ... - OR - Concentrate on solving the cause of those illnesses, that is the ageing. Treat ageing as a disease and fund anti-ageing research. "Overpopulation": Make people believe that earth is dying and they shouldn't have children - OR - Build habitat (O'Neil cylinders) on the orbit thus opening virtually endless living space Nuclear war: Pacify a horrible dictator, leave him "ways to retreat" - OR - build habitats on the orbit; atomic explosions in space won't do much damage at all (there is a constant atomic explosion already there, called Sun). Hunger: Not a problem, earth agriculture is overproducing; the real problem is horrible dictators and the lack of new land that people can escape to from that dictator.

Mezzie 4y ago
I'm not sure if I agree on the dichotomy of technical vs. social solutions. Where would you place something like efforts to increase a population literacy rates? It's not a new technical advantage, but it doesn't suck or limit possibilities. If anything, it creates them, since a literate population is one you can teach to drive, where employers can assume literacy for training purposes, where governments can give information to their people in writing, where people can read their own religious texts without intermediaries, etc.

nicoco 4y ago

I'm surprised not to find any mention of Chomsky here and his "new pascal wager". > Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

maxbendick 4y ago

In analyzing political pieces (especially one so concerned with The Enlightenment), it's important to go deeper than content. What moved someone to put so much effort into this thought specifically? Nietzsche, critic of enlightenment, would ask: "which kind of will-to-power is expressed here?" Steven Pinker is popular among accomplished people, and there's no conspiracy about this: rational optimism just gets that crowd going. Maybe it's because they don't have much better to worry about! Reading this kind of writing is like eating a bag of candy. I eat one saccharine piece of "{X} good thing has grown by {Y}%", and then I grasp for the next morsel before I've finished chewing the first.

boxed 4y ago
This comment is a text book case of projection. Everything written above is 100% true of the comment itself. Critical but without substance. Looks down their nose but not realizing they are lying on their back and actually lookup UP. The original article and Pinker are quite clear: there are HUGE problems to be solved. Theirs is not a philosophy of complacency, but of hard work. REAL hard work that can actually SUCCEED. Unlike complaining, and unlike just ignoring the problem, and unlike pretending everything is getting worse when we know it isn't.
- deleted 4y ago
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- notahacker 4y ago
  > Pinker are quite clear: there are HUGE problems to be solved That's... not the impression I get from reading Pinker. On the contrary, he has an infuriating habit of presenting "x is getting better" shortly after bashing a straw man version of the groups working hardest to make x better. Everyone from civil rights activists to software developers who worked on on the Millennium Bug were, in Pinker's eyes, committing the cardinal sin of Availability Bias rather than focusing on all those nice comforting trend lines pointing in the right direction.
  - boxed 4y ago

Barrin92 4y ago

>It was optimism that made science take off. No, the title should be "optimism chose me". Articles like this are the product of scientific progress. People don't have ideas, ideas have people. Science took itself off once it got started. (in tandem with capital). It's funny that 'rational optimism', Enlightenment obsessed people stress science and secularism so much. They may not notice it but the framework they're in is fundamentally religious and idealistic, assuming they can move the world in directions they want by thinking the right thoughts. "Appreciation and its close cousin, gratitude, are something we need a lot more of these days. But our gratitude is not for heaven-sent good fortune. It’s for the innumerable positive changes and advancements forged by science," The author is even somewhat self aware of the fact that this sounds suspiciously like worship, but somehow not completely.

Animats 4y ago

Encouraging trends: - Energy is getting fixed. Simply because wind and solar are cheap, and electric vehicles work well. There will be lots of kicking and screaming during the transition, but 20 years out, it won't be a problem. - We seem to be past peak crazyness in major national leaders. Donald Trump is out. Boris Johnson is out. Benjamin Netanyahu is out. Putin remains a problem. - Vaccine technology has made huge strides in recent years. Omicron vaccine ships in October. Broad-spectrum vaccines for most of the flu/coronavirus family are in test. We have a monkeypox vaccine already. Cranking out a designed vaccine for a new threat is now routine. Even an AIDS vaccine, which is really hard, now looks possible. - The supply chain disruptions of the last few years have led to major investments in new manufacturing capacity all over the world. From wafer fabs to fertilizer factories, plants are going up. Having multiple sources is now important again. It takes a while for this to have an effect, after which prices go down. - The population bomb fizzled out. World population is leveling off. All the major developed countries are now below replacement rate.

BoxOfRain 4y ago
>- We seem to be past peak crazyness in major national leaders. Donald Trump is out. Boris Johnson is out. Benjamin Netanyahu is out. Putin remains a problem. Not to throw cold water over this too much but Johnson's likely successor is basically him again but without any of the charisma that sold many of the public on him in the first place. Liz Truss is an author of Britannia Unchained which pretty much accuses the British public of being workshy good-for-nothings and bemoans the fact they won't cheerfully volunteer for long hours and exploitative wages. The irony is by Dominic Cummings' account at least Truss is a bit of a chocolate teapot herself! It's said that history repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce, I think Margaret Thatcher might be about to get her farcical repetition in a month or so.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  That's still progress. A crazy leader with charisma is much more dangerous than the same amount of crazy without charisma.

joshthecynic 4y ago

blfr 4y ago

There are two issues with OP. First, is that this optimism is indefinite in words of Peter Thiel. It's gonna be fine but without any directions how to make that future actually happen. Can we just sit and wait? Second, it addresses factors that just aren't important. Doesn’t she know that Christian nationalism has largely taken over the Republican Party and that the Enlightenment values of freedom of inquiry, tolerance, and reason are being threatened from the political Right as well as—to a worrying extent—the political Left? These are downright silly concerns in the world with collapsing birth rates on the verge of a world war with Russia and China trying to use their last gasp for empire building. Living five years longer in a larger house with AC is nothing to sneeze at but perhaps not quite the win in the world of record-breaking obesity and drug addiction. We're trading biological capital for material comforts. And not even at a good exchange rate.

eddyparkinson 4y ago

The book learned optimism covers the value of both optimism and pessimism. He wrote the book to help people become more optimistic. The main thing I learned from the book, is knowing when it is good to be optimistic or pessimistic. There is a time and a place for each. But, on average, optimists tend to win, because they keep trying longer.

int_19h 4y ago

It's hard to be an optimist when it looks like the years we're living in right now are the same future historians will argue about when deciding whether WW3 "actually began" in 2022.

brainzap 4y ago
future historians will argue about when deciding whether climate change "actually began" in 2022.
- int_19h 4y ago
  First things first.

CloseChoice 4y ago

I think it's hard to argue that we DON'T live in an age with the highest life expectancy and material wealth ever (at least for the western countries, but this probably holds around globe). But there are quite a few things we are not good at measuring like mental health, freedom and overall happiness. It the points we can measure are not correlated to the non-measurable points. Though I would deem the non-measurable points even more important. That said, I always choose optimism over so called realism and pessimism. This optimism doesn't mean that anything changes for the better by itself but that personal decisions can have an impact for the better.

Nemrod67 4y ago

Realism is what we need, how can all of those "optimists" be so foolish?

clouddrover 4y ago

Optimism is for children. The attitude you want to cultivate is meliorism. Start with realism and then progress to meliorism. Read Thomas Hardy's poetry. He'll help you understand.

InfiniteRand 4y ago

I’m a bit ambivalent about optimism on the historical scale. History does have examples of things getting worse, it’s hard to pinpoint the cases where it got worse for the majority of earth’s population at once, since different regions sometimes prosper at the time others decline, but there are things like the Bronze Age collapse which are widespread enough to be likely candidates. That particular scenario of civilization collapse I think is unlikely, however it does create the question of whether history always gets better over the long term. And the long term scales of history are long, long enough to make it impossible to tell a definite trend from a possible one if you are looking for meaning behind history. But I am a religious man and I have hope things will stay on the uptrend in some way. I think a CB lot of faith in history is ultimately a matter of faith, one with arguments behind it but I don’t think those arguments are bulletproof

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pessimizer 4y ago

People who choose what they believe have an entirely different understanding of the concept of belief than I do. Belief is something that is inflicted upon me by my environment, not something I choose based on the lifestyle I want or the people I want to associate with. Consumer belief? If I could choose my beliefs, I would choose to believe in an almost completely different set of things. All of my beliefs would be self-serving, I'd be really happy about how everything was going every day. The reason I can't do this is because it would be really damaging to the people around me, and to society. I can't choose to ignore that.

jason-phillips 4y ago
While I appreciate your perspective, the construct you described allows one to invalidate others' beliefs as being "wrong" because they don't adhere to the same reference point as yourself. > All of my beliefs would be self-serving This is not a true statement. Why cannot one choose what one feels to be the most appropriate construct after careful inspection and introspection?
- bombcar 4y ago
  Once you realize you know way less about everything than you thought you did, and much of what is “known” is future conjectures with many parts, you realize you can select the optimistic view.
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. I agree with what GP wrote. Their second paragraph is written in the first person. It's not a claim that everyone would do the self-serving thing. I would do the same as GP. I'd choose a set of beliefs that help me sleep at night and that make me a hoot at dinner parties instead of a Debbie Downer. I can't simply choose to do that, because those beliefs come from my experience with and observations of the world along with my deeply-held values.
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pelasaco 4y ago

Pandemic, War and Famine Probably until 2019 in some places on earth, the author was absolute right. Let's wait until the Fall/Winter to see.

fuzzfactor 4y ago

Well deep in the hillbilly country they still tell the story of the little blacksmith who was way back in the mountains and was very lonely. He was not even 5 feet tall but he was strong and handsome and did his work well but all the girls in his community had overlooked him and were already married. One day a beautiful lady from a nearby mountain comes into his shop and needs new hinges for her daddy's barn door. The little blacksmith thinks she's attractive even though she's well over 6 feet tall, and he eagerly agrees to do an outstanding job. She's quite agreeable herself and he asks her if she's married, and she is not. So he asks if he can come and call on her in the future and she said that would be alright and she bent down and kissed him right on the cheek. He hopped right up on his anvil and kissed her back and she said good-by until the next day when she will pick up the hinges. On the next day she came back and before she was going to leave he invited her to take a look around his part of the mountain a little bit, they went to where he had a wonderful garden, the birds were singing, it was so romantic. He looked up into her eyes and sincerely told her how much he was thinking of another kiss. She was a little too bashful right then and told him to wait until the weekend when he could be her date at the barn dance. He understood, and couldn't complain, so he said "well if there's not going to be any more kissin' today, I think I'll put this anvil down."

WhyDoIThink 4y ago

I'm convinced this article's poster never learned about native American history properly. America never had democracy. It has always been a totalitarian country that only benefits upper-class white men who profitably kill and bully people. Authoritarianism was never on the rise. Freedom is an illusion. The American dream is a scam. The C.I.A. targets black people more than white people. The C.I.A. created political coups to bully countries for creating dehumanizing sweatshops that have child slavery. The C.I.A. agents rape people. America's prisons are created to trap working class Americans into poverty, drug abuse, and insanity. America's cops are required to have poor intelligence and low empathy to benefit very rich oligarchs only. America's rulers are attacking free speech and union workers to keep working class Americans enslaved. America's rulers intentionally created broken education systems to enslave working class Americans. America's rulers want working class Americans selling their souls to the American military instead of creating a peaceful world based on reason rather than greedy violence. America's rulers are not interested in creating a society where everyone is compassionate critical thinkers. They are interested in creating mind-controlled weapons living in poverty that make our world burn for profit. It's Sociopathic Capitalism 101.

Comevius 4y ago

Humans no longer seeing themselves as the pawns of nature is nothing to be proud of. We still depend on nature, nothing have changed, only this dependence is now obfuscated. There is a buffer between us and nature, which makes us utterly blind to the consequences of our actions. We are not living in the best of times, we are living the biggest lie ever. Our way of life is utterly unsustainable, and by our way of life I mean us the upper 10% that gets to reap 90% of the benefits. Robyn E. Blumner did not choose optimism, she choose ignorance, because she is among the priviledged few who can be freely ignorant. Optimism is not a choice in any case. We are biologically inclined to be optimistic, even when we are fatalistic, in which case we are optimistic about a negative outcome. This is a cognitive limitation, not something to be proud of.

samsquire 4y ago
Society decided we wanted good things and we took action to get those things. I am against poverty and not having things such as electricity and clean tap water, abundant food, education, hospital care, sewage treatment and proper waste disposal. I like these things, they are good. You would be surprised at how sustainable things are by sheer hard work and will. In other words, we get what we cause. The alternative to these things is worse. To be sustainable (no or renewable electricity, sparse population, no cars, no factories, no meat, land used for growing food) you need to remove the things society wants by sheer will. And I don't think you'll sell anybody on that. In other words, telling people that they need to give up good things is not enough.
- mrtesthah 4y ago
  That’s a false dichotomy; we can have all these things without burning down rainforests at a furious pace and filling the oceans with plastic, etc. These things are done out of laziness and carelessness.
  - samsquire 4y ago
    I don't think it's false but it might be a dichotomy. The good things we enjoy are destructive and have externalities. To offer a solution, if the people who do bad things such as not dispose waste properly or want to cut down rainforests for profit, we need to solve the incentives behind those decisions. Such as universal basic income. Or lowering crime. Unfortunately poverty is the baseline. In other words you need to expend resources to get resources. I said in my comment things are sustainable by sheer will. To implement sustainability we need to invest profound amounts of resources and do extreme amounts of work by sheer will to solve the problem. We also need the right people working on these problems. The smartest people from my simple perspective are working on the wrong problems. What we have is an improper allocation of limited resources.

mrandish 4y ago

It's easy (and popular) to be a pessimist but when I look at objective global data on decade+ time scales, the only rational conclusion is that things are generally getting better for more people in more places than ever before (data like global poverty, infant mortality, literacy, etc). That doesn't mean we don't still have a ways to go and it certainly doesn't mean that things aren't terrible for some people in some places at any given moment. Addressing those things for those people in those places should certainly be a top priority but we shouldn't let that blind us to the broader reality that by most standardized, objective measures things are mostly getting better for more people more of the time.

adrianN 4y ago
The economy gets better for more people in more places than ever before. Environmental destruction is also progressing faster than ever before. Many crucial ecosystems are on the brink of collapse (e.g. the rainforests) and we show no signs of intending to protect them.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Media doesn't report good things that happen in the environment. From 2013-2019, they hammered constantly on how the Great Barrier Reef was dying. But, not a peep when they found that it is healthiest its ever been in recent history: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/parts-australias-great-barrier-reef-show-highest-coral-cover-36-years-2022-08-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/parts-australia... No wonder the trust in media has fallen to the lowest. Reuters/AP are informative as a root source, but I have stopped trusting environmentalist doom-and-gloom stories from MSM. Environment is going to get far worse though. Germany is busy burning the shittiest form of coal as its primary fuel (35%): Lignite coal with 1/5th water content. It is the worse than burning literally anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany Again, thanks to the utterly idiotic emotionally-driven environmentalists that are going to make the planet worse ironically. We need to stop giving them fodder and look to the tech/engineering community for solutions.

Grim-444 4y ago

The author comes across as the extremely echo-chambered, brainwashed, close-minded person she herself is afraid of. I couldn't invent a more on brand characterization of person with a heavily biased/politicized/skewed worldview if I tried.