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I thought this was going to be an article about optimism ("geeking out" as in getting excited about things). I acknowledge that I'm responding to the headline a

I thought this was going to be an article about optimism ("geeking out" as in getting excited about things). I acknowledge that I'm responding to the headline and not the meat of the article. I've recently (past ~5 years) stopped viewing the world pessimistically. I don't believe it's because I'm blindly optimistic, but because I didn't have the perspective to understand our ancestor's problems and how good of a life I had. It's pretty cool that I didn't die in 6th grade when I put that knife through my hand, that my knee doesn't lock anymore after having my meniscus removed, and pretty cool my wife survived to adulthood with unbelievably poor vision and asthma. It's pretty cool that a large portion of living is automated now by the systems around us, from food to cleaning, and that those systems are affordable enough that they're common place in most households. We've freed our societies up to focus on arts and science which has created a flywheel that keeps paying us greater and greater returns that we keep investing into arts and science. Humans have done some cool things to conquer our basic nature and environment, and we continue to do cool things. Compared to other species we are absolutely killing it. Yes we suck compared to what we are going to be in the future, but that's the point! Whenever I get a brief feeling of "this is bad," I remind myself that humans have conquered far worse than whatever "this" is and that we are likely to triumph over this thing too. Taking a second to appreciate what our species has accomplished, and "geeking out" about it, has helped improve my quality of life, thought I'd take a moment and share that with you.

melagonster 4y ago
I hope this will happen:) everyday, I read a post about AI on HN and then feel terrible... guess human still exists.
si1entstill 4y ago
I feel like I am and always have been a "day-to-day" optimist, but I struggle to apply that to larger, societal problems. Our impact on the environment is measurable and the impacts look dire. Income disparity seems to be increasing locally and globally. The military industrial complex of the largest nation-states feels eternal, as if it is a fundamental part of neoliberal capitalism. I can "half-full" almost everything day to day. Financial issues, medical issues, family problems... never easy, but doable. I can handle it, smile on my face, and tough it out. But when I'm left alone with my thoughts, its hard for me not to draw the conclusion that the world my children (or their children) grow up in will be worse-off, and they will live harder lives than we have.
- fullsend 4y ago
  Because we are in fact so disconnected from our military today, modern people have forgotten that human civilization itself has been a military industrial complex forever. Not much to do with capitalism in particular.
  - si1entstill 4y ago
    I think there is a crucial semantic disconnect here, that may be partially stemmed from how much heavy lifting the relatively new term "military industrial complex" is doing. I'm likely partially to blame. I use the term to refer to the the status quo of the relationship between interest groups, legislative bodies, and the bureaucratic system. I don't think I've forgotten anything. Some degree of defense was, and still is, necessary. I'm not refuting that. But, I believe that current manifestations of this relationship has lead to a system that is largely driven by private interests that have little to do with the defense or security of the people.
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  Is the military industrial complex really that big? I’m under the impression that it’s honestly pretty weak and fragile.
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    Yep, the current Russian war in Ukraine exposed the fact that the western 'military complex' isn't that industrial anymore, as (for example) the total annual production of artillery shells is less than what we'd shoot in a single average day of WW2. There's still a lot of money spent, but it's spent less on actual industrial capacity but rather mostly on various high-tech R&D things - probably because then you can convert a larger portion of the order to profits instead of hardware.
    - fauxpause_ 4y ago
      Yes that was what I meant. Lots of RD. probably an army of contractors. But industry? I really don’t think so. Still curious if others have evidence otherwise
411111111111111 4y ago
> Whenever I get a brief feeling of "this is bad," I remind myself that humans have conquered far worse than whatever "this" is and that we are likely to triumph over this thing too. I do something very similar, though slightly different. Whenever I notice something bad i rejoice that I've probably lived through the best times our western society likely ever have I at least experienced a reality which didn't have [the bad thing] as the norm. Society is not gonna get more equal from now on, so Gen Beta (people that are currently being born) are gonna have a massively worse life then I've had.
- spoonfeeder006 4y ago
  Have we had to handle anything as bad as global climate change which can possibly render much of the lower latitudes near inhospitable for humans?
- Uupis 4y ago
  Oh, somehow this kinda clicks for me. Thank you! Reminds me of: > I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.
pathartl 4y ago
There are a few people in my circle that are overburdened by conspiracy theories to the point where they think that humans are corrupt and everyone is out to get them. It's exhausting to live like that. My goal is to be my 13 yr old self's hero. Do cool stuff, be in a good relationship, and fix things that bother me to the best of my ability.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    And those left people then started believing in Q and drank desinfection to cure covid?
    - eldritch_4ier 4y ago
      To be fair there are way more leftists who think trump is as bad as hitler as there are conservatives who believe in the Q stuff. Most conservatives don't even understand what Qanon even is other than a catchall for "conspiracy theories".
    - TMWNN 4y ago
      The non-crazy right laughs at, ignores, or (as eldritch_4ier said) mostly does not know what "Q" is. The left's equivalents to QAnon get 17.5K upvotes and 2.5K comments on /r/politics, articles in The Atlantic, and nightly IT'S HAPPENINGs on Maddow.
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        The right literally elected several of these people into congress, and they are actively getting their way so that McCarthy could have his speaker seat.
zokier 4y ago
> Whenever I get a brief feeling of "this is bad," I remind myself that humans have conquered far worse than whatever "this" is It's a nice sentiment, but I see no reason to think it is true. While I'd agree that in many ways life is nicer and easier, the problems that we do have now are even more complex and difficult than ever.
- Damogran6 4y ago
  You're still above ground after a global, full-blown, pandemic. Which is nice. The things that bring me the biggest anxiety all come from Twitter, and I find they don't much impact my day to day. While the internet shows me the absolute worst of mankind (in addition to the best), I find my IRL world isn't half bad.
- mewpmewp2 4y ago
  Sure, there are huge challenges facing us as a civilization, but we are not alone in terms of solving those. Individually people on average I believe are better off now compared to any time previous in history. Of course some people have terrible lives still, some people die at birth, but we are living in a truly astonishing era with endless possibilities in my view.
onemoresoop 4y ago
> Humans have done some cool things to conquer our basic nature and environment, and we continue to do cool things. Compared to other species we are absolutely killing it. Yes we suck compared to what we are going to be in the future, but that's the point! At the same time it's important not to forget humans have done some messed up things to the environment that are not easy to clean up or undo. And they still do, all with a paltry goal to make a short term profit. This is what drives my optimism away, though I am not a pessimistic person by nature.
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  I have a longer response on another sibling. But I’d say: 1) Most humans mean well and these are side effects of solutions to other problems - we can find and hold up examples of people acting poorly but to extrapolate that out I don’t think is fair. Energy abundance has done unbelievably important things for civil rights, quality of life, and the prospect of life being able to outlive Earth. 2) It’s important to remember life on earth is ~75% behind us. We’ve only got another 500m years until there is a complete extinction event with little hope of coming back. If you take humans out of the picture, you don’t save nature, you doom it to complete extinction. Humans are awesome, all flaws considered. We are the only golden ticket our planet has printed to get life off this rock.
  - s5300 4y ago
    > We’ve only got another 500m years until there is a complete extinction event with little hope of coming back. Are you speaking of a gamma ray burst expected to affect the ozone layer severely enough?
    - r3trohack3r 4y ago
      No, the carbon cycle being disrupted. From your question I assume you’re on the Timeline of the Far Future Wikipedia page, which references this. It’s the next few boxes below the gamma ray burst. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
e_i_pi_2 4y ago
This is somewhat true but also somewhat not - we have a lower chance of childhood mortality, but only in some countries. We have a general higher standard of living, but income inequality is worse than it's ever been. We have less people dying in wars, but when we do have them more people die than ever would have in the past. I'd recommend "The better angels of our nature" as a book for more on this - it covers human history of this well and shows the tradeoffs we've been making at the same time. The average person today has more creature comforts than a king a hundred years ago, but at the same time almost no one today has as much vacation time as a medieval peasant did
HervalFreire 4y ago
There was a science experiment where they took pessimists and optimists and had them rate themselves from one to ten in terms of looks. Then they had another external group of people rate them based off of the same 1 to 10 scale to get an unbiased baseline. Turns out pessimists had a more accurate and realistic rating around how good they looked. While optimists had ratings that were wildly overblown. There are other experiments that measured other things related to these two groups of people. It turns out optimists are, happier, have higher salaries and are much more successful in life while pessimists are more likely to be clinically depressed. This experiment tells us a dark truth about human nature. We lie to ourselves to stay sane. We construct illusions to protect ourselves from fully experiencing the cruel reality of life. Optimism is a special kind of blindness. It's blindness that blinds you from being aware you're blind. So look deeply at yourself. Are you happy? Are you optimistic? If so then that is in itself a statistical statement about how delusional and intelligent you actually are. Can you handle the truth? I wonder how this post will get voted? Down for being depressing and negative? Or up for being truthful?
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  > I wonder how this post will get voted? Down for being depressing and negative? Or up for being truthful? Likely down for talking about votes. And for assuming there is only one truth. > We construct illusions to protect ourselves from fully experiencing the cruel reality of life. Reality is cruel. Nature is cruel. Existence is cruel. And Humans have overcome a substantial amount of that cruelty and enjoy a quality of life our ancestors couldn't even dream of. There are many other things to be optimistic about given where life on earth started and how it is going for humans. Our ancestors have come a long way in 4.5bn years, it would be special kind of blindness to write that progress off as a lie we tell ourselves to stay sane.
  - HervalFreire 4y ago
    Who knows? You could be right and I could be the one that is totally blind. I propose an experiment to find out just which one of us is actually more delusional. To start off, how would you rate yourself in terms of looks from 1 to 10?

melagonster 4y ago

I hope this will happen:) everyday, I read a post about AI on HN and then feel terrible... guess human still exists.

si1entstill 4y ago

I feel like I am and always have been a "day-to-day" optimist, but I struggle to apply that to larger, societal problems. Our impact on the environment is measurable and the impacts look dire. Income disparity seems to be increasing locally and globally. The military industrial complex of the largest nation-states feels eternal, as if it is a fundamental part of neoliberal capitalism. I can "half-full" almost everything day to day. Financial issues, medical issues, family problems... never easy, but doable. I can handle it, smile on my face, and tough it out. But when I'm left alone with my thoughts, its hard for me not to draw the conclusion that the world my children (or their children) grow up in will be worse-off, and they will live harder lives than we have.

fullsend 4y ago
Because we are in fact so disconnected from our military today, modern people have forgotten that human civilization itself has been a military industrial complex forever. Not much to do with capitalism in particular.
- si1entstill 4y ago
  I think there is a crucial semantic disconnect here, that may be partially stemmed from how much heavy lifting the relatively new term "military industrial complex" is doing. I'm likely partially to blame. I use the term to refer to the the status quo of the relationship between interest groups, legislative bodies, and the bureaucratic system. I don't think I've forgotten anything. Some degree of defense was, and still is, necessary. I'm not refuting that. But, I believe that current manifestations of this relationship has lead to a system that is largely driven by private interests that have little to do with the defense or security of the people.
fauxpause_ 4y ago
Is the military industrial complex really that big? I’m under the impression that it’s honestly pretty weak and fragile.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  Yep, the current Russian war in Ukraine exposed the fact that the western 'military complex' isn't that industrial anymore, as (for example) the total annual production of artillery shells is less than what we'd shoot in a single average day of WW2. There's still a lot of money spent, but it's spent less on actual industrial capacity but rather mostly on various high-tech R&D things - probably because then you can convert a larger portion of the order to profits instead of hardware.
  - fauxpause_ 4y ago
    Yes that was what I meant. Lots of RD. probably an army of contractors. But industry? I really don’t think so. Still curious if others have evidence otherwise

411111111111111 4y ago

> Whenever I get a brief feeling of "this is bad," I remind myself that humans have conquered far worse than whatever "this" is and that we are likely to triumph over this thing too. I do something very similar, though slightly different. Whenever I notice something bad i rejoice that I've probably lived through the best times our western society likely ever have I at least experienced a reality which didn't have [the bad thing] as the norm. Society is not gonna get more equal from now on, so Gen Beta (people that are currently being born) are gonna have a massively worse life then I've had.

spoonfeeder006 4y ago
Have we had to handle anything as bad as global climate change which can possibly render much of the lower latitudes near inhospitable for humans?
Uupis 4y ago
Oh, somehow this kinda clicks for me. Thank you! Reminds me of: > I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.

pathartl 4y ago

There are a few people in my circle that are overburdened by conspiracy theories to the point where they think that humans are corrupt and everyone is out to get them. It's exhausting to live like that. My goal is to be my 13 yr old self's hero. Do cool stuff, be in a good relationship, and fix things that bother me to the best of my ability.

TMWNN 4y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  And those left people then started believing in Q and drank desinfection to cure covid?
  - eldritch_4ier 4y ago
    To be fair there are way more leftists who think trump is as bad as hitler as there are conservatives who believe in the Q stuff. Most conservatives don't even understand what Qanon even is other than a catchall for "conspiracy theories".
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    The non-crazy right laughs at, ignores, or (as eldritch_4ier said) mostly does not know what "Q" is. The left's equivalents to QAnon get 17.5K upvotes and 2.5K comments on /r/politics, articles in The Atlantic, and nightly IT'S HAPPENINGs on Maddow.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      The right literally elected several of these people into congress, and they are actively getting their way so that McCarthy could have his speaker seat.

zokier 4y ago

> Whenever I get a brief feeling of "this is bad," I remind myself that humans have conquered far worse than whatever "this" is It's a nice sentiment, but I see no reason to think it is true. While I'd agree that in many ways life is nicer and easier, the problems that we do have now are even more complex and difficult than ever.

Damogran6 4y ago
You're still above ground after a global, full-blown, pandemic. Which is nice. The things that bring me the biggest anxiety all come from Twitter, and I find they don't much impact my day to day. While the internet shows me the absolute worst of mankind (in addition to the best), I find my IRL world isn't half bad.
mewpmewp2 4y ago
Sure, there are huge challenges facing us as a civilization, but we are not alone in terms of solving those. Individually people on average I believe are better off now compared to any time previous in history. Of course some people have terrible lives still, some people die at birth, but we are living in a truly astonishing era with endless possibilities in my view.

onemoresoop 4y ago

> Humans have done some cool things to conquer our basic nature and environment, and we continue to do cool things. Compared to other species we are absolutely killing it. Yes we suck compared to what we are going to be in the future, but that's the point! At the same time it's important not to forget humans have done some messed up things to the environment that are not easy to clean up or undo. And they still do, all with a paltry goal to make a short term profit. This is what drives my optimism away, though I am not a pessimistic person by nature.

r3trohack3r 4y ago
I have a longer response on another sibling. But I’d say: 1) Most humans mean well and these are side effects of solutions to other problems - we can find and hold up examples of people acting poorly but to extrapolate that out I don’t think is fair. Energy abundance has done unbelievably important things for civil rights, quality of life, and the prospect of life being able to outlive Earth. 2) It’s important to remember life on earth is ~75% behind us. We’ve only got another 500m years until there is a complete extinction event with little hope of coming back. If you take humans out of the picture, you don’t save nature, you doom it to complete extinction. Humans are awesome, all flaws considered. We are the only golden ticket our planet has printed to get life off this rock.
- s5300 4y ago
  > We’ve only got another 500m years until there is a complete extinction event with little hope of coming back. Are you speaking of a gamma ray burst expected to affect the ozone layer severely enough?
  - r3trohack3r 4y ago
    No, the carbon cycle being disrupted. From your question I assume you’re on the Timeline of the Far Future Wikipedia page, which references this. It’s the next few boxes below the gamma ray burst. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

e_i_pi_2 4y ago

This is somewhat true but also somewhat not - we have a lower chance of childhood mortality, but only in some countries. We have a general higher standard of living, but income inequality is worse than it's ever been. We have less people dying in wars, but when we do have them more people die than ever would have in the past. I'd recommend "The better angels of our nature" as a book for more on this - it covers human history of this well and shows the tradeoffs we've been making at the same time. The average person today has more creature comforts than a king a hundred years ago, but at the same time almost no one today has as much vacation time as a medieval peasant did

HervalFreire 4y ago

There was a science experiment where they took pessimists and optimists and had them rate themselves from one to ten in terms of looks. Then they had another external group of people rate them based off of the same 1 to 10 scale to get an unbiased baseline. Turns out pessimists had a more accurate and realistic rating around how good they looked. While optimists had ratings that were wildly overblown. There are other experiments that measured other things related to these two groups of people. It turns out optimists are, happier, have higher salaries and are much more successful in life while pessimists are more likely to be clinically depressed. This experiment tells us a dark truth about human nature. We lie to ourselves to stay sane. We construct illusions to protect ourselves from fully experiencing the cruel reality of life. Optimism is a special kind of blindness. It's blindness that blinds you from being aware you're blind. So look deeply at yourself. Are you happy? Are you optimistic? If so then that is in itself a statistical statement about how delusional and intelligent you actually are. Can you handle the truth? I wonder how this post will get voted? Down for being depressing and negative? Or up for being truthful?

r3trohack3r 4y ago
> I wonder how this post will get voted? Down for being depressing and negative? Or up for being truthful? Likely down for talking about votes. And for assuming there is only one truth. > We construct illusions to protect ourselves from fully experiencing the cruel reality of life. Reality is cruel. Nature is cruel. Existence is cruel. And Humans have overcome a substantial amount of that cruelty and enjoy a quality of life our ancestors couldn't even dream of. There are many other things to be optimistic about given where life on earth started and how it is going for humans. Our ancestors have come a long way in 4.5bn years, it would be special kind of blindness to write that progress off as a lie we tell ourselves to stay sane.
- HervalFreire 4y ago
  Who knows? You could be right and I could be the one that is totally blind. I propose an experiment to find out just which one of us is actually more delusional. To start off, how would you rate yourself in terms of looks from 1 to 10?