5 ms·

I'm 21 and I think everything's going to shit as well... is it doomerism or reality? Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becomi

by cedws 4y ago

I'm 21 and I think everything's going to shit as well... is it doomerism or reality? Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?

drewcon 4y ago
You’re wrong on pretty much every measure here.
- c7DJTLrn 4y ago
  Please keep the low quality comments to Reddit. Thanks.
  - laidoffamazon 4y ago
    I think you should consider backing those assertions up a little bit more. > Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse? 1 is definitely not true given patronage doesn't exist like the early 1900s. 2 doesn't seem terribly true given the state of the world for most of the 20th's century, including two world wars followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation - meanwhile, today the "bear" is being beat with donated hand-me-downs. Innovation doesn't seem to be coming to a standstill, we are seeing rapid advancements in ML just this year, not to mention in energy (fusion research, battery research, wind+solar deployments) and biotech (MRNA). Housing is more expensive, yes, but the easy solution remains just having a longer commute like people in the 2000's dealt with. More people got married in 2022 than in "Morning in America" 1984, so there's no real decline in family formation either. I don't think kids are checking out of life either. I really can't see any statement here that's particularly justified.
    - mxkopy 4y ago
      > 2 doesn't seem terribly true given the state of the world for most of the 20th's century, including two world wars followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation - meanwhile, today the "bear" is being beat with donated hand-me-downs. Alright, fair, conflicts like the one in Ukraine aren't anything new, with what's going on in Palestine, Iran, Egypt, Rwanda, probably countless others I can't name. But EVEN IF you were referring to how 'mundane' and indicative of stability such conflicts are, I'd refer you the Doomsday Clock which was recently set to 90 seconds to midnight. I don't really know much about the geopolitical state of the world, but I'd trust a group of scientists who have direct interest in the matter to make those sorts of calls for me. > I don't think kids are checking out of life either Kids were checking out of life when I was in high school ~5 years ago. Hell even I was. So if you've got any updates on that situation please feel free to educate us. > More people got married in 2022 than in "Morning in America" 1984 Can you supply the percentages please? Because otherwise this is pretty meaningless
- Kuinox 4y ago
  ah yes, the 10k€/m2 studio is probably my imagination.
  - ako 4y ago
    I recently learned here on HN that you're probably just looking in the wrong place for a studio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34528025#34528779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34528025#34528779
    - Kuinox 4y ago
      For sure you could buy a land for 3 month of salary in the campaign. Where nobody can employ you.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories), and getting more in person interaction. You don’t need to be invested in the finer details of global politics or stories of violence hundreds of miles a way. Disconnect and recharge. Reconnect with people around you and enjoy the world as it exists, not for some representation of all the terrible things on news media.
- cedws 4y ago
  I have a problem with reading too much news, you're right. However, switching it off doesn't lessen the impact on daily life. Fuel doesn't become cheaper because I stopped reading the BBC News reports about the Russo-Ukrainian war. I don't pay less tax because I chose not to read about the government increasing VAT.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    How much of that resentment towards fuel prices stems from being told to be resentful about fuel prices? When we're able to make our own judgments about the goings on in our life instead of being programmed how to feel by the media, life stops feeling like it's all hell.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      This is a big one. In a less dramatic way, it's easier to enjoy video games when you don't read the reddit threads whinging about them. It's easy to feel like a game is unplayable garbage when you read a list of every single complaint people have, while playing and experiencing it yourself, you just don't notice this stuff and get to simply enjoy the content.
  - kansface 4y ago
    It does, actually. It’s the difference between struggling and being preoccupied with struggle. Anxiety doesn’t make fuel cheaper, end war, or racism; anxiety is not a virtue.
- 4y ago
zug_zug 4y ago
Those are a bunch of statements that angry people with agree with, but you haven't presented any evidence for your claims, and I think they're mostly backward. We're in the longest period of peace in thousands of years. Check out this cool graphic that puts in perspective: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ People are mad about politics, but I don't think it's any worse than the cold-war, kennedy assassination, mcarthyism, being drafted to Nam. Reagan was a movie-star who became president. Innovation is the fastest its ever been. It's hard to say how corruption is changing, and whether accountability is greater or lesser now. People are upset about the environment now, but consider stuff from the last 100 years (leaded gasoline, the banned-pesticides, radioactive toothpaste, etc etc).
- jmcgough 4y ago
  There's way less trust in our society than they have been in many years. This is something that's been studied with evidence to back it up. You can see this in the week it took to elect a speaker of the house, something that hasn't happened (at that scale) since the 19th century. Globally, nations that become more economically developed shift towards individualism and selfishness.
  - mach1ne 4y ago
    This is actually what you’d expect from practically any system where wealth and power centralize as a function of time. The pressure will grow until it eventually might pop.
  - HEmanZ 4y ago
    This trust thing is true, but it doesn’t mean that institutions are lest trustworthy. It seems more that we have the tools (institutional, cultural, technological) to actually understand many systems better and see how untrustworthy they are. Basically, our vision is better, the situation isn’t worse. Individualism is something I do half agree with. I’m not sure it’s a time-based thing tho, and I’m agnostic to whether it is good or bad. Collectivism in the past could be incredibly stifling and coercive. Hyper individualism can be alienating. There is some middle ground and I actually believe we are in the process of moving towards it. Because if you talk to anyone, they KNOW there is a problem with how individualistic consumerism causes us problems, and they KNOW alienation is a problem. We are learning to balance our new-ish freedoms, prosperity, and individual flourishing with our deep need for community and solidarity. It will take time, but we will figure it out.
HEmanZ 4y ago
I want to call out that at least in the US, politicians actually appear way less corrupt than they used to be. Any reading of specific political histories, e.g Robert Caro, you can quickly get a feel for just how insanely corrupt politicians have been throughout history. If you compare them to today, it’s actually some relief. They are still corrupt today but really it’s child’s play compared to most of US history and pretty much all of world history. I think a big problem is that people don’t read or watch real history, they are only familiar with abstract, high-level, or hyper-biased history. In basically every aspect imaginable, excepting maybe some things resembling spirituality (which do matter but are much trickier to pin down and understand) the world is so so much better than it has ever been, petty much everywhere
- djur 4y ago
  If anything, the problem with modern-day politics is that politicians are too committed to their ideological beliefs and are not corrupt enough to be bribed into cooperation.
ako 4y ago
This is worth reading: https://wordsrated.com/summary-factfulness-ten-reasons-were-wrong-about-the-world-and-why-things-are-better-than-you-think-by-hans-rosling-ola-rosling-anna-rosling-ronnlund/ https://wordsrated.com/summary-factfulness-ten-reasons-were-...
nabakin 4y ago
> Innovation is coming to a standstill Machine learning is getting significantly more powerful by the month, nuclear fusion technology has been advancing at a much faster pace recently (not even counting the NIF's breakthrough), though shrouded in scams and misrepresentation the technology behind cryptocurrency is extremely impressive, the cost and efficiency of green technology just keeps improving, the cost and efficiency of going into space has improved dramatically, pills which can cure obesity, cancer wins, longer lifespans than ever before, I could go on. I imagine one of the reasons you think innovation is stagnating is because the industry which has innovated at an incredible rate for the past 50 years, where you spend most of your life and time, is finally maturing. This was always going to happen. It was just a matter of time.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Even the stuff that has had ages to mature still seems to be rocketing forward. The M1 Macbook upended the whole market, one day we suddenly had a thin laptop with no fan that outperformed chunky brick laptops and did it with outstanding battery life. The rest of the market is catching up now but I don't think we should ignore how remarkably fast this all changed.
- dorkwood 4y ago
  > though shrouded in scams and misrepresentation the technology behind cryptocurrency is extremely impressive Can someone explain in layman’s terms what the impressive parts are? The mania surrounding NFTs left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d like to keep an open mind about the technology.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Likewise. Here's the most convincing video I've seen trying to explain that, but even this explanation doesn't feel great: https://youtu.be/qBAOsB6ETrY https://youtu.be/qBAOsB6ETrY It's from the Computerphile channel, so I trust it more than random YouTube.
lucb1e 4y ago
Others already said this is wrong on basically every point, but I haven't seen this one commented yet: > Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse? It's the smallest, easiest, most concrete thing. Dictionary, en masse, "as a whole". Sure, hyperbole, so let's say... how about a bit more than half, 51%? But you're talking about suicide (presumably), we all know that isn't 50% of the population, but I don't know the figure. "En masse" really, even as a hyperbole, sounds to me like it ought to be at least a few percent. Wikipedia -> search 'suicide rate' -> redirects to article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... The worst country in the world has a suicide rate below 0.1%. Kids I couldn't quickly find a global rate for but in the USA (https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html) it's at 0.002%. "En masse" is not even close to reality. Every individual instance is horrendous for those involved, that's probably why you hear about it and why it seems so bad, but keep things in perspective when considering what the world as a whole is like.
- Izkata 4y ago
  That phrase doesn't necessarily mean suicide. It generally means "giving up" - for example, burying themselves in things like video games or social media instead of school or friends.
mancerayder 4y ago
I felt like that when I was 21 as well! I had very strong political beliefs as a reaction to these, with an angry desire for change. That's entirely common at that age. The nihilism seems more pronounced in the 20somethings of today, but when I was that age music also reflected that same nihilism, so who knows if it's worse now experientially.

by cedws 4y ago

drewcon 4y ago

You’re wrong on pretty much every measure here.

c7DJTLrn 4y ago
Please keep the low quality comments to Reddit. Thanks.
- laidoffamazon 4y ago
  I think you should consider backing those assertions up a little bit more. > Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse? 1 is definitely not true given patronage doesn't exist like the early 1900s. 2 doesn't seem terribly true given the state of the world for most of the 20th's century, including two world wars followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation - meanwhile, today the "bear" is being beat with donated hand-me-downs. Innovation doesn't seem to be coming to a standstill, we are seeing rapid advancements in ML just this year, not to mention in energy (fusion research, battery research, wind+solar deployments) and biotech (MRNA). Housing is more expensive, yes, but the easy solution remains just having a longer commute like people in the 2000's dealt with. More people got married in 2022 than in "Morning in America" 1984, so there's no real decline in family formation either. I don't think kids are checking out of life either. I really can't see any statement here that's particularly justified.
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    > 2 doesn't seem terribly true given the state of the world for most of the 20th's century, including two world wars followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation - meanwhile, today the "bear" is being beat with donated hand-me-downs. Alright, fair, conflicts like the one in Ukraine aren't anything new, with what's going on in Palestine, Iran, Egypt, Rwanda, probably countless others I can't name. But EVEN IF you were referring to how 'mundane' and indicative of stability such conflicts are, I'd refer you the Doomsday Clock which was recently set to 90 seconds to midnight. I don't really know much about the geopolitical state of the world, but I'd trust a group of scientists who have direct interest in the matter to make those sorts of calls for me. > I don't think kids are checking out of life either Kids were checking out of life when I was in high school ~5 years ago. Hell even I was. So if you've got any updates on that situation please feel free to educate us. > More people got married in 2022 than in "Morning in America" 1984 Can you supply the percentages please? Because otherwise this is pretty meaningless
Kuinox 4y ago
ah yes, the 10k€/m2 studio is probably my imagination.
- ako 4y ago
  I recently learned here on HN that you're probably just looking in the wrong place for a studio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34528025#34528779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34528025#34528779
  - Kuinox 4y ago
    For sure you could buy a land for 3 month of salary in the campaign. Where nobody can employ you.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories), and getting more in person interaction. You don’t need to be invested in the finer details of global politics or stories of violence hundreds of miles a way. Disconnect and recharge. Reconnect with people around you and enjoy the world as it exists, not for some representation of all the terrible things on news media.

cedws 4y ago
I have a problem with reading too much news, you're right. However, switching it off doesn't lessen the impact on daily life. Fuel doesn't become cheaper because I stopped reading the BBC News reports about the Russo-Ukrainian war. I don't pay less tax because I chose not to read about the government increasing VAT.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  How much of that resentment towards fuel prices stems from being told to be resentful about fuel prices? When we're able to make our own judgments about the goings on in our life instead of being programmed how to feel by the media, life stops feeling like it's all hell.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    This is a big one. In a less dramatic way, it's easier to enjoy video games when you don't read the reddit threads whinging about them. It's easy to feel like a game is unplayable garbage when you read a list of every single complaint people have, while playing and experiencing it yourself, you just don't notice this stuff and get to simply enjoy the content.
- kansface 4y ago
  It does, actually. It’s the difference between struggling and being preoccupied with struggle. Anxiety doesn’t make fuel cheaper, end war, or racism; anxiety is not a virtue.
4y ago

zug_zug 4y ago

Those are a bunch of statements that angry people with agree with, but you haven't presented any evidence for your claims, and I think they're mostly backward. We're in the longest period of peace in thousands of years. Check out this cool graphic that puts in perspective: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ People are mad about politics, but I don't think it's any worse than the cold-war, kennedy assassination, mcarthyism, being drafted to Nam. Reagan was a movie-star who became president. Innovation is the fastest its ever been. It's hard to say how corruption is changing, and whether accountability is greater or lesser now. People are upset about the environment now, but consider stuff from the last 100 years (leaded gasoline, the banned-pesticides, radioactive toothpaste, etc etc).

jmcgough 4y ago
There's way less trust in our society than they have been in many years. This is something that's been studied with evidence to back it up. You can see this in the week it took to elect a speaker of the house, something that hasn't happened (at that scale) since the 19th century. Globally, nations that become more economically developed shift towards individualism and selfishness.
- mach1ne 4y ago
  This is actually what you’d expect from practically any system where wealth and power centralize as a function of time. The pressure will grow until it eventually might pop.
- HEmanZ 4y ago
  This trust thing is true, but it doesn’t mean that institutions are lest trustworthy. It seems more that we have the tools (institutional, cultural, technological) to actually understand many systems better and see how untrustworthy they are. Basically, our vision is better, the situation isn’t worse. Individualism is something I do half agree with. I’m not sure it’s a time-based thing tho, and I’m agnostic to whether it is good or bad. Collectivism in the past could be incredibly stifling and coercive. Hyper individualism can be alienating. There is some middle ground and I actually believe we are in the process of moving towards it. Because if you talk to anyone, they KNOW there is a problem with how individualistic consumerism causes us problems, and they KNOW alienation is a problem. We are learning to balance our new-ish freedoms, prosperity, and individual flourishing with our deep need for community and solidarity. It will take time, but we will figure it out.

HEmanZ 4y ago

I want to call out that at least in the US, politicians actually appear way less corrupt than they used to be. Any reading of specific political histories, e.g Robert Caro, you can quickly get a feel for just how insanely corrupt politicians have been throughout history. If you compare them to today, it’s actually some relief. They are still corrupt today but really it’s child’s play compared to most of US history and pretty much all of world history. I think a big problem is that people don’t read or watch real history, they are only familiar with abstract, high-level, or hyper-biased history. In basically every aspect imaginable, excepting maybe some things resembling spirituality (which do matter but are much trickier to pin down and understand) the world is so so much better than it has ever been, petty much everywhere

djur 4y ago
If anything, the problem with modern-day politics is that politicians are too committed to their ideological beliefs and are not corrupt enough to be bribed into cooperation.

ako 4y ago

This is worth reading: https://wordsrated.com/summary-factfulness-ten-reasons-were-wrong-about-the-world-and-why-things-are-better-than-you-think-by-hans-rosling-ola-rosling-anna-rosling-ronnlund/ https://wordsrated.com/summary-factfulness-ten-reasons-were-...

nabakin 4y ago

> Innovation is coming to a standstill Machine learning is getting significantly more powerful by the month, nuclear fusion technology has been advancing at a much faster pace recently (not even counting the NIF's breakthrough), though shrouded in scams and misrepresentation the technology behind cryptocurrency is extremely impressive, the cost and efficiency of green technology just keeps improving, the cost and efficiency of going into space has improved dramatically, pills which can cure obesity, cancer wins, longer lifespans than ever before, I could go on. I imagine one of the reasons you think innovation is stagnating is because the industry which has innovated at an incredible rate for the past 50 years, where you spend most of your life and time, is finally maturing. This was always going to happen. It was just a matter of time.

Gigachad 4y ago
Even the stuff that has had ages to mature still seems to be rocketing forward. The M1 Macbook upended the whole market, one day we suddenly had a thin laptop with no fan that outperformed chunky brick laptops and did it with outstanding battery life. The rest of the market is catching up now but I don't think we should ignore how remarkably fast this all changed.
dorkwood 4y ago
> though shrouded in scams and misrepresentation the technology behind cryptocurrency is extremely impressive Can someone explain in layman’s terms what the impressive parts are? The mania surrounding NFTs left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d like to keep an open mind about the technology.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Likewise. Here's the most convincing video I've seen trying to explain that, but even this explanation doesn't feel great: https://youtu.be/qBAOsB6ETrY https://youtu.be/qBAOsB6ETrY It's from the Computerphile channel, so I trust it more than random YouTube.

lucb1e 4y ago

Others already said this is wrong on basically every point, but I haven't seen this one commented yet: > Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse? It's the smallest, easiest, most concrete thing. Dictionary, en masse, "as a whole". Sure, hyperbole, so let's say... how about a bit more than half, 51%? But you're talking about suicide (presumably), we all know that isn't 50% of the population, but I don't know the figure. "En masse" really, even as a hyperbole, sounds to me like it ought to be at least a few percent. Wikipedia -> search 'suicide rate' -> redirects to article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... The worst country in the world has a suicide rate below 0.1%. Kids I couldn't quickly find a global rate for but in the USA (https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html) it's at 0.002%. "En masse" is not even close to reality. Every individual instance is horrendous for those involved, that's probably why you hear about it and why it seems so bad, but keep things in perspective when considering what the world as a whole is like.

Izkata 4y ago
That phrase doesn't necessarily mean suicide. It generally means "giving up" - for example, burying themselves in things like video games or social media instead of school or friends.

mancerayder 4y ago

I felt like that when I was 21 as well! I had very strong political beliefs as a reaction to these, with an angry desire for change. That's entirely common at that age. The nihilism seems more pronounced in the 20somethings of today, but when I was that age music also reflected that same nihilism, so who knows if it's worse now experientially.