6 ms·

How the World Is Getting Better

46 points by zdw 4y ago

jschveibinz 4y ago
So it is very interesting to see that this article has very few views, no other comments, and very few up votes. We are living in the best of times. We just don’t want to believe it.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  I agree on a longer time scale, but my life and the lives of many I know is markedly worse than 5 years ago. Crime is up a LOT in NYC, and the subway for the first time in my lifetime feels sketchy during the day. Inflation has really hurt a lot of my lower SES friends, and there's a general nihilism that's pretty unpleasant. Also, the mass shooting thing has gotten much worse in the last 30 years.
  - powerbroker 4y ago
    Mass shooting deaths YTD at end of March 2023: ~200. Gun violence deaths YTD at end of March 2023: ~10,000. Question asked: "How many peole in the u.s. die in mass shootings compared to how many people die in gun violence?" Source: https://www.phind.com/search?cache=6a726999-4846-410b-aa52-57beb3bc54bd https://www.phind.com/search?cache=6a726999-4846-410b-aa52-5...
    - __pache__ 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
        I hope your comment is being sarcastic, because if not, it really highlights how completely and utterly bonkers the discourse on school shootings has become in the USA. Your numbers do not take into account the thousands of students at each school (and surrounding schools), and their parents, that experience horrific trauma from shootings, which is simply not comparable to an accidental pool or car death.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        Nope being serious. I'm living with a disabled father from a car accident. Decades to go caring for a completely disabled person. Many thousands of people every year are in pain from car accidents. Or medical malpractice which takes like a quarter million lives yearly. No need to go on about extremely rare insane people that are almost all medicated. They would drive a truck through a crowd if not gun them down. The numbers don't make sense, 200 vs millions impacted by other real problems
        JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
        With the lack of unified empathy surrounding school shootings, it’s not surprising that millions of people are impacted by things like shitty healthcare, dangerous driving, relentless marketing for unhealthy lifestyles, etc. The shootings and its highly toxic discourse are symptoms of something very rotten. School shootings in the USA absolutely eclipse every other first world nation combined. Also, 200 deaths equates to potentially hundreds of thousands of traumatised kids. With such fear permeating it’s not surprising that the system produces mentally unstable people that can’t access treatment.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        [flagged]
        watwut 4y ago
        FYI, teachers are disarmed and that is a good thing. This argument just show how manipulative andnutterly lacking brain pro-mass shooting side of debate became.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        Insanity
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - watwut 4y ago
        It is perfectly valid for people to be angry about mass shootings, even if people die more from something else. It even actually rationally does not make sense to act like it is a gotcha. Moreover, actually in USA deaths on roads went up Moreover, there is large overlap between those who see mass shooting as issue and those who want walkable streets and the kind of zoning that promotes less driving.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        It's also perfectly valid to be realistic: the reality is they are exceedingly rare. That's it. You don't need to check all the Halloween candy.
        watwut 4y ago
        The difference here is that Halloween candy being poisoned is urban myth ... and school shootings are real experience. The fact is, kids are having active shooter drills in schools.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        200 kids have died in school shootings 200 kids have died last month in Chicago. Come on.
        tptacek 4y ago
        The two tragedies don't have comparable psychological impacts. If all we cared about was minmaxing deaths, we'd work on nothing but CVD and automobile accidents. And, of course, the number of kids shot in Chicago last month doesn't even resemble 200.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        [flagged]
- _cenw 4y ago
  All these examples are on timescales of 70+ years. That's kind of meaningless to me, a millenial, looking at all wealth having already been bundled up. Living in cities or owning a house? Barely affordable, even with an average tech salary. I don't even want to assume how shitty things would be if I made below 50k like most of my peers. You could make a very similar list focusing on income, cost of living and relative buying power on a timescale of 50 years or another on the environment on a scale of 20 years and both would be quite depressing. It feels very "well actually" wishful thinking by someone well off enough to ignore all the cracks. At least it doesn't feel quite as deliberately misleading as the Steven Pinker "we redefined the poverty line, look at all the poverty that's going away" slight of hand.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > meaningless to me, a millenial, looking at all wealth having already been bundled up. Living in cities or owning a house? Barely affordable, even with an average tech salary Well, you’re living. Without disease, war or famine. The world’s knowledge at your fingertips. I’m about your age, and while there is a lot of work to be done, one of the most difficult hurdles to solving them is the nihilism and civic disengagement in our generation and industry. We’re sitting in a golden age of human achievement at the centre of the first world. > could make a very similar list focusing on income, cost of living and relative buying power on a timescale of 50 years or another on the environment on a scale of 20 years and both would be quite depressing Real wages have gone up over the last fifty and twenty years. Living in cities has become less affordable. But that you’re citing that as a standard of wellbeing, it’s a massive improvement from the post-War era.
    - uxcolumbo 4y ago
      What good is it when you have to perform one or multiple menial jobs every day just to exist. That lifestyle doesn't leave you with much mental energy at the end of a long work day to absorb and learn from the world's knowledge at your fingertips. Yes, some folks are probably able to pull themselves out of that situation - but those are edge cases. On top of that the added anxiety people experience because of living paycheck to paycheck. It's becoming more and more like in the movie Elysium - all the technological wonders are there - just not accessible to the poor.
mvdl 4y ago
Hans Rösling tried to tell us. Take this test to see if your perception of the world is right. https://upgrader.gapminder.org/ https://upgrader.gapminder.org/
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mlboss 4y ago
The world is getting better “for humans”. Earth as a whole is getting worse.
- earthlingdavey 4y ago
  Yes, written by a blogger with a focus on 'wealth management, investments, financial markets and investor psychology.' Not a single mention of natural world.
rsrsrs86 4y ago
I get the point, but secular perspectives can not help those in need.
BMc2020 4y ago
"Chatgpt, regenerate the same murder rate statistic 10 times. Do that with infant mortality too. Same with education. Now do poverty. Now speed of transportation. Create a similar sounding statistic about lightning strikes."
Unkn0wnError 4y ago
It seems to me that the points mentioned in the article didn't reflect many other ways of how truly better off we are, compared to literally every generation before us. Also, yeah sure, houses now are more expensive relative to salaries (mostly in cities but it's true generally). However, in almost any other metric, we own a lot more, and have much more options to thrive, we are safer and healthier, and ultimately we're much much better off. The world is getting better, and witnessing people deny this fact is depressing.
- brailsafe 4y ago
  Meh, shouldn't be so surprising should it? By your own admission, some things get better, but many aren't able to secure things that are deemed significant for a stable and healthy life. Like woop-dee-doo I can access more information than ever, but it hasn't really helped me stay employed for longer than 1 and a half years, and it's mathematically extremely unlikely I'll ever be able to stop working.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > witnessing people There is some good chance, given potential volumes, you misunderstood for people mistaking aggregates what could be instead people not referring to aggregates but to downfalls of civilization surrounding them.
mdp2021 4y ago
> In [Henry Kissinger's] concluding chapter, he issues a plea for a return to a broader humanistic education based on an engagement with philosophy, modern languages, history, literature, and classical antiquity. While American secondary schools and universities have become adept at educating, or, to put it more precisely, producing, activists and technicians, they have «wandered from their mission of forming citizens - among them potential statesmen». Whether this development can truly be arrested is an open question. The American mind has been closing for awhile. But in producing Leadership, which is old-fashioned in the best sense of the term, Kissinger has produced a potent reminder that great men and, yes, women can make history rather than remain passive observers helplessly buffeted about by contemporary events ~~~ Jacob Heilbrunn Decline of the quality of education seen in many already leading Countries is producing weakened «citizens»; the consequences are massive, degrading quality of service and finally making entire classes of critical service fade into unusability. The rigid consideration of aggregates like "more people in the world can read" reveals a potential of progress in long timespans and hides dire crises of immediate urgency. -- Edit: while I had other contexts in mind, it is an interesting coincidence that the current _topmost_ submission in HN is "Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?".
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  Not really a Kissinger fan but wow, that is inspiring.

46 points by zdw 4y ago

So it is very interesting to see that this article has very few views, no other comments, and very few up votes. We are living in the best of times. We just don’t want to believe it.

throwayyy479087 4y ago
I agree on a longer time scale, but my life and the lives of many I know is markedly worse than 5 years ago. Crime is up a LOT in NYC, and the subway for the first time in my lifetime feels sketchy during the day. Inflation has really hurt a lot of my lower SES friends, and there's a general nihilism that's pretty unpleasant. Also, the mass shooting thing has gotten much worse in the last 30 years.
- powerbroker 4y ago
  Mass shooting deaths YTD at end of March 2023: ~200. Gun violence deaths YTD at end of March 2023: ~10,000. Question asked: "How many peole in the u.s. die in mass shootings compared to how many people die in gun violence?" Source: https://www.phind.com/search?cache=6a726999-4846-410b-aa52-57beb3bc54bd https://www.phind.com/search?cache=6a726999-4846-410b-aa52-5...
  - __pache__ 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
      I hope your comment is being sarcastic, because if not, it really highlights how completely and utterly bonkers the discourse on school shootings has become in the USA. Your numbers do not take into account the thousands of students at each school (and surrounding schools), and their parents, that experience horrific trauma from shootings, which is simply not comparable to an accidental pool or car death.
      - __pache__ 4y ago
        Nope being serious. I'm living with a disabled father from a car accident. Decades to go caring for a completely disabled person. Many thousands of people every year are in pain from car accidents. Or medical malpractice which takes like a quarter million lives yearly. No need to go on about extremely rare insane people that are almost all medicated. They would drive a truck through a crowd if not gun them down. The numbers don't make sense, 200 vs millions impacted by other real problems
        JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
        With the lack of unified empathy surrounding school shootings, it’s not surprising that millions of people are impacted by things like shitty healthcare, dangerous driving, relentless marketing for unhealthy lifestyles, etc. The shootings and its highly toxic discourse are symptoms of something very rotten. School shootings in the USA absolutely eclipse every other first world nation combined. Also, 200 deaths equates to potentially hundreds of thousands of traumatised kids. With such fear permeating it’s not surprising that the system produces mentally unstable people that can’t access treatment.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        [flagged]
        watwut 4y ago
        FYI, teachers are disarmed and that is a good thing. This argument just show how manipulative andnutterly lacking brain pro-mass shooting side of debate became.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        Insanity
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - watwut 4y ago
      It is perfectly valid for people to be angry about mass shootings, even if people die more from something else. It even actually rationally does not make sense to act like it is a gotcha. Moreover, actually in USA deaths on roads went up Moreover, there is large overlap between those who see mass shooting as issue and those who want walkable streets and the kind of zoning that promotes less driving.
      - __pache__ 4y ago
        It's also perfectly valid to be realistic: the reality is they are exceedingly rare. That's it. You don't need to check all the Halloween candy.
        watwut 4y ago
        The difference here is that Halloween candy being poisoned is urban myth ... and school shootings are real experience. The fact is, kids are having active shooter drills in schools.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        200 kids have died in school shootings 200 kids have died last month in Chicago. Come on.
        tptacek 4y ago
        The two tragedies don't have comparable psychological impacts. If all we cared about was minmaxing deaths, we'd work on nothing but CVD and automobile accidents. And, of course, the number of kids shot in Chicago last month doesn't even resemble 200.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        [flagged]
_cenw 4y ago
All these examples are on timescales of 70+ years. That's kind of meaningless to me, a millenial, looking at all wealth having already been bundled up. Living in cities or owning a house? Barely affordable, even with an average tech salary. I don't even want to assume how shitty things would be if I made below 50k like most of my peers. You could make a very similar list focusing on income, cost of living and relative buying power on a timescale of 50 years or another on the environment on a scale of 20 years and both would be quite depressing. It feels very "well actually" wishful thinking by someone well off enough to ignore all the cracks. At least it doesn't feel quite as deliberately misleading as the Steven Pinker "we redefined the poverty line, look at all the poverty that's going away" slight of hand.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > meaningless to me, a millenial, looking at all wealth having already been bundled up. Living in cities or owning a house? Barely affordable, even with an average tech salary Well, you’re living. Without disease, war or famine. The world’s knowledge at your fingertips. I’m about your age, and while there is a lot of work to be done, one of the most difficult hurdles to solving them is the nihilism and civic disengagement in our generation and industry. We’re sitting in a golden age of human achievement at the centre of the first world. > could make a very similar list focusing on income, cost of living and relative buying power on a timescale of 50 years or another on the environment on a scale of 20 years and both would be quite depressing Real wages have gone up over the last fifty and twenty years. Living in cities has become less affordable. But that you’re citing that as a standard of wellbeing, it’s a massive improvement from the post-War era.
  - uxcolumbo 4y ago
    What good is it when you have to perform one or multiple menial jobs every day just to exist. That lifestyle doesn't leave you with much mental energy at the end of a long work day to absorb and learn from the world's knowledge at your fingertips. Yes, some folks are probably able to pull themselves out of that situation - but those are edge cases. On top of that the added anxiety people experience because of living paycheck to paycheck. It's becoming more and more like in the movie Elysium - all the technological wonders are there - just not accessible to the poor.

mvdl 4y ago

Hans Rösling tried to tell us. Take this test to see if your perception of the world is right. https://upgrader.gapminder.org/ https://upgrader.gapminder.org/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mlboss 4y ago

The world is getting better “for humans”. Earth as a whole is getting worse.

earthlingdavey 4y ago
Yes, written by a blogger with a focus on 'wealth management, investments, financial markets and investor psychology.' Not a single mention of natural world.

rsrsrs86 4y ago

I get the point, but secular perspectives can not help those in need.

BMc2020 4y ago

"Chatgpt, regenerate the same murder rate statistic 10 times. Do that with infant mortality too. Same with education. Now do poverty. Now speed of transportation. Create a similar sounding statistic about lightning strikes."

Unkn0wnError 4y ago

It seems to me that the points mentioned in the article didn't reflect many other ways of how truly better off we are, compared to literally every generation before us. Also, yeah sure, houses now are more expensive relative to salaries (mostly in cities but it's true generally). However, in almost any other metric, we own a lot more, and have much more options to thrive, we are safer and healthier, and ultimately we're much much better off. The world is getting better, and witnessing people deny this fact is depressing.

brailsafe 4y ago
Meh, shouldn't be so surprising should it? By your own admission, some things get better, but many aren't able to secure things that are deemed significant for a stable and healthy life. Like woop-dee-doo I can access more information than ever, but it hasn't really helped me stay employed for longer than 1 and a half years, and it's mathematically extremely unlikely I'll ever be able to stop working.
mdp2021 4y ago
> witnessing people There is some good chance, given potential volumes, you misunderstood for people mistaking aggregates what could be instead people not referring to aggregates but to downfalls of civilization surrounding them.

mdp2021 4y ago

> In [Henry Kissinger's] concluding chapter, he issues a plea for a return to a broader humanistic education based on an engagement with philosophy, modern languages, history, literature, and classical antiquity. While American secondary schools and universities have become adept at educating, or, to put it more precisely, producing, activists and technicians, they have «wandered from their mission of forming citizens - among them potential statesmen». Whether this development can truly be arrested is an open question. The American mind has been closing for awhile. But in producing Leadership, which is old-fashioned in the best sense of the term, Kissinger has produced a potent reminder that great men and, yes, women can make history rather than remain passive observers helplessly buffeted about by contemporary events ~~~ Jacob Heilbrunn Decline of the quality of education seen in many already leading Countries is producing weakened «citizens»; the consequences are massive, degrading quality of service and finally making entire classes of critical service fade into unusability. The rigid consideration of aggregates like "more people in the world can read" reveals a potential of progress in long timespans and hides dire crises of immediate urgency. -- Edit: while I had other contexts in mind, it is an interesting coincidence that the current _topmost_ submission in HN is "Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?".

ChatGTP 4y ago
Not really a Kissinger fan but wow, that is inspiring.