8 ms·

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 gener

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.
  - throwanapple 4y ago
    Regarding the Great Barrier Reef, it's not as simple as you're saying: https://theconversation.com/record-coral-cover-doesnt-necessarily-mean-the-great-barrier-reef-is-in-good-health-despite-what-you-may-have-heard-188233 https://theconversation.com/record-coral-cover-doesnt-necess...
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      Maybe, why is this source trustworthy, I have no idea. There are probably many examples of improvement in the environment that goes unreported. I used to trust climate science. That trust is being eroded for me. Just the other day, someone reported that kids are gaining weight due to climate change. The reason? They can’t go out and play when it’s 2 deg C hotter. Come on. I despise climate catastrophization by the media.
      - Joeri 4y ago
        Media reporting on climate change is often dramatically wrong, whether it takes the slant of “everything is terrible” or “things are actually great”. Go read how the IPCC reports are authored, you’ll hopefully develop some faith about the accuracy of what is in them. Then go read the summaries for policy makers to get an idea of what they say. You’ll see that most of what both sides are saying is in there is not what is in there.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    I'm active in my community advocating for greater transit and modeshare and our transit advocacy network is much better at trumpeting good news than the MSM and many Twitter doomers for a simple reason: nobody will give us more funding until we tell them how $X was spent on initiative Y which led to great outcome Z. It's our job to tell everyone how this little bike lane in this neighborhood decreased car trips and increased safety. The MSM faces no existential risk when it trumpets bad news all day, but we have to convince our neighbors that the money they're spending or the traffic blockage they're facing as new infrastructure is built is worthwhile.
  - 4y ago
NovaVeles 4y ago
I am in the camp of we are in overshoot, have been for a very long time. In the same way that a someone can spend way above their income by using the credit card. Looks great now but that looming cloud of debt is coming. Societal wise we have done this via the monkey pore wish for "unlimited energy" in the form of fossil fuels. We got energy unlike anything else in history but at the cost of environmental blow back and setting the paradigm for our living standards. Maybe we will rise to the challenge and go green on these, I'm not convinced yet but I am definitely not ruling it out. When it comes to optimism, it boils down to two distinct modes. Necessity is the mother of invention. Less energy, stuff and stimulation will be good for most people in wealthy countries. Fossil fuels will decline, we will make some cool new stuff that makes that decline easier, we will demand less stuff and use of energy. This doesn't sound so bad. Hopefully we will move into something akin to Solarpunk + cottage core. A declined future that is more fair. But the pessimist in me feels like that is but fantasy.
- goatlover 4y ago
  Why would energy usage need to decline when there's a giant ball of fusion in our sky we barely make use of, and when we've just begun exploring space in the past century?
  - s-lambert 4y ago
    Solar energy isn't free, it takes a lot of metals just to turn solar energy into electrical energy (including batteries for storage) and they don't last forever. Here's a link to a talk from an associate professor doing an estimation of how much metals are needed to switch to renewable energy: https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc?t=2406 https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc?t=2406
    - adrianN 4y ago
      Solar energy is the cheapest form of energy we have. Storage is a bit more expensive, but judging from the amount of metals the video proposes they want to go all-in on battery storage, whereas most experts I heard from propose to use hydrogen (or methane) as a storage medium, precisely because the amount of resources it needs are much smaller.
jshen 4y ago
Decade+ time scales don’t mean a whole lot. It’s far too short a time.
worldshit 4y ago
it's only gotten better if you look at food access, but food access != happiness; depression is rampant because we are being forced to live against our nature. I assure you, I hate being alive in the current world, even if my stomach is full. Moreover even that is most likely only temporary, we are living inside a consumerist bubble that will soon burst (growing social unrest, ravaging pollution, probably a major war) leaving a horrible mess behind (we don't know how to endure physical discomfort anymore).
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Not entirely true, e.g. deaths from natural disasters have been on a steady decline over many decades despite such disasters becoming more common and more destructive. In general our ability to continue improving human life expectancy has seemingly defied the odds - even in 2022 despite covid and everything else, average life expectancy is expected to improve on 2021 in most countries (including the good ol' U S of A). It does feel a bit like quantity over quality though.
Comevius 4y ago
Things did get better globally, even if marginally for most, but at what price. If I take out a loan to live it up for a year, but then have no way of paying it back, because I haven't invested the money into anything substantial did things really got better for me? With the Industrial Revolution, and later the Green Revolution we began accumulating a debt. All the gains we made were borrowed against the future. This is not progress, this is ignorance.
- neilwilson 4y ago
  "If I take out a loan to live it up for a year, but then have no way of paying it back, because I haven't invested the money into anything substantial did things really got better for me?" Yes. Because those you spent it with must have, or you wouldn't have been able to buy anything with it. Therefore you caused things to happen that wouldn't otherwise have happened. Debt is one of human's greatest inventions. It's what allows us to ensure that the underlying currency - human labour time - isn't wasted because there is no call to use it today. Instead we have a currency - "here's a pig, owe me one" that causes a surplus to arise. Some people won't be able to fulfil that promise in which case it will, in advanced societies, be cancelled. That's what bankruptcy is for. The assets you used to secure the loan are then transferred to others. However the use of labour time in others to create the capacity to generate a surplus remains somewhere down the induced transaction chain. Debt is the magic by which money is created on demand. That causes information to be transmitted down the supply chain that causes the capacity to make more to arise. Which is why those societies that use debt are more advanced than those that chose to outlaw its use. They ended up with fewer days wasted in aggregate and more capacity to produce. Most people fulfil their promises since it is inherent in human society to do right by others. And quite a lot of people like holding the assets that represent the debt as a status symbol of how well they have done - whether they can actually really call in those promises or not.
  - philipashlock 4y ago
    Ecological and resource extractive debt is not magic, they have limits and externalities that most financial systems don't fully account for in their balance sheets.

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.
- throwanapple 4y ago
  Regarding the Great Barrier Reef, it's not as simple as you're saying: https://theconversation.com/record-coral-cover-doesnt-necessarily-mean-the-great-barrier-reef-is-in-good-health-despite-what-you-may-have-heard-188233 https://theconversation.com/record-coral-cover-doesnt-necess...
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Maybe, why is this source trustworthy, I have no idea. There are probably many examples of improvement in the environment that goes unreported. I used to trust climate science. That trust is being eroded for me. Just the other day, someone reported that kids are gaining weight due to climate change. The reason? They can’t go out and play when it’s 2 deg C hotter. Come on. I despise climate catastrophization by the media.
    - Joeri 4y ago
      Media reporting on climate change is often dramatically wrong, whether it takes the slant of “everything is terrible” or “things are actually great”. Go read how the IPCC reports are authored, you’ll hopefully develop some faith about the accuracy of what is in them. Then go read the summaries for policy makers to get an idea of what they say. You’ll see that most of what both sides are saying is in there is not what is in there.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  I'm active in my community advocating for greater transit and modeshare and our transit advocacy network is much better at trumpeting good news than the MSM and many Twitter doomers for a simple reason: nobody will give us more funding until we tell them how $X was spent on initiative Y which led to great outcome Z. It's our job to tell everyone how this little bike lane in this neighborhood decreased car trips and increased safety. The MSM faces no existential risk when it trumpets bad news all day, but we have to convince our neighbors that the money they're spending or the traffic blockage they're facing as new infrastructure is built is worthwhile.
- 4y ago

NovaVeles 4y ago

I am in the camp of we are in overshoot, have been for a very long time. In the same way that a someone can spend way above their income by using the credit card. Looks great now but that looming cloud of debt is coming. Societal wise we have done this via the monkey pore wish for "unlimited energy" in the form of fossil fuels. We got energy unlike anything else in history but at the cost of environmental blow back and setting the paradigm for our living standards. Maybe we will rise to the challenge and go green on these, I'm not convinced yet but I am definitely not ruling it out. When it comes to optimism, it boils down to two distinct modes. Necessity is the mother of invention. Less energy, stuff and stimulation will be good for most people in wealthy countries. Fossil fuels will decline, we will make some cool new stuff that makes that decline easier, we will demand less stuff and use of energy. This doesn't sound so bad. Hopefully we will move into something akin to Solarpunk + cottage core. A declined future that is more fair. But the pessimist in me feels like that is but fantasy.

goatlover 4y ago
Why would energy usage need to decline when there's a giant ball of fusion in our sky we barely make use of, and when we've just begun exploring space in the past century?
- s-lambert 4y ago
  Solar energy isn't free, it takes a lot of metals just to turn solar energy into electrical energy (including batteries for storage) and they don't last forever. Here's a link to a talk from an associate professor doing an estimation of how much metals are needed to switch to renewable energy: https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc?t=2406 https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc?t=2406
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Solar energy is the cheapest form of energy we have. Storage is a bit more expensive, but judging from the amount of metals the video proposes they want to go all-in on battery storage, whereas most experts I heard from propose to use hydrogen (or methane) as a storage medium, precisely because the amount of resources it needs are much smaller.

jshen 4y ago

Decade+ time scales don’t mean a whole lot. It’s far too short a time.

worldshit 4y ago

it's only gotten better if you look at food access, but food access != happiness; depression is rampant because we are being forced to live against our nature. I assure you, I hate being alive in the current world, even if my stomach is full. Moreover even that is most likely only temporary, we are living inside a consumerist bubble that will soon burst (growing social unrest, ravaging pollution, probably a major war) leaving a horrible mess behind (we don't know how to endure physical discomfort anymore).

wizofaus 4y ago
Not entirely true, e.g. deaths from natural disasters have been on a steady decline over many decades despite such disasters becoming more common and more destructive. In general our ability to continue improving human life expectancy has seemingly defied the odds - even in 2022 despite covid and everything else, average life expectancy is expected to improve on 2021 in most countries (including the good ol' U S of A). It does feel a bit like quantity over quality though.

Comevius 4y ago

Things did get better globally, even if marginally for most, but at what price. If I take out a loan to live it up for a year, but then have no way of paying it back, because I haven't invested the money into anything substantial did things really got better for me? With the Industrial Revolution, and later the Green Revolution we began accumulating a debt. All the gains we made were borrowed against the future. This is not progress, this is ignorance.

neilwilson 4y ago
"If I take out a loan to live it up for a year, but then have no way of paying it back, because I haven't invested the money into anything substantial did things really got better for me?" Yes. Because those you spent it with must have, or you wouldn't have been able to buy anything with it. Therefore you caused things to happen that wouldn't otherwise have happened. Debt is one of human's greatest inventions. It's what allows us to ensure that the underlying currency - human labour time - isn't wasted because there is no call to use it today. Instead we have a currency - "here's a pig, owe me one" that causes a surplus to arise. Some people won't be able to fulfil that promise in which case it will, in advanced societies, be cancelled. That's what bankruptcy is for. The assets you used to secure the loan are then transferred to others. However the use of labour time in others to create the capacity to generate a surplus remains somewhere down the induced transaction chain. Debt is the magic by which money is created on demand. That causes information to be transmitted down the supply chain that causes the capacity to make more to arise. Which is why those societies that use debt are more advanced than those that chose to outlaw its use. They ended up with fewer days wasted in aggregate and more capacity to produce. Most people fulfil their promises since it is inherent in human society to do right by others. And quite a lot of people like holding the assets that represent the debt as a status symbol of how well they have done - whether they can actually really call in those promises or not.
- philipashlock 4y ago
  Ecological and resource extractive debt is not magic, they have limits and externalities that most financial systems don't fully account for in their balance sheets.