4 ms·

The average person has a higher standard of living and more wealth than ever before. Suicide rates are not at all-time highs, they were much higher during the W

The average person has a higher standard of living and more wealth than ever before. Suicide rates are not at all-time highs, they were much higher during the World Wars and Great Depression. Drug abuse is down too, but newer drugs are more potent. Mental illness is a hard stat to compare over time since it is very sensitive to the collection mechanisms. The growth of carbon-free technologies has been exponential over the last few decades. Open(source?) AI models trail the leading closed models by 6-12 months, it's hard to say they are only in the hands of the most powerful. The world is better than ever before, but it could be even better. The internet is filled with too many doomerist takes.

skrtskrt 2y ago
when you visit or live among people or parts of society that that essentially never "modernized" in any meaningful way, the only thing they really need is better healthcare. the rest is a load of crap that is just solving problems created by industrialization and modernization
- megaman821 2y ago
  Are you talking about lost Amazon tribes? Most places I have visited people have seen real quality of life improvements by having clean water, refrigeration, sewage systems and access to the internet.
  - szundi 2y ago
    Yeah yeah, but it’s so romantic that they use bamboo sticks for hunting and killing each other with poisoned arrows while dying of worm infections and shit
    - fuzztester 2y ago
      b-b-but ... 2000 lb bombs, ar-15s, drones, guided missiles, f-15s, heavy artillery are more romantic! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle next up, a total lovefest, icbms firing thermonuclear bombs?
      - Kerb_ 2y ago
        Civilization, I'll stay right here
        fuzztester 2y ago
        Call Gandhi. google Gandhi Western civilization good idea
  - skrtskrt 2y ago
    thank you for reminding me why I don't comment on Hacker News much. 1. Completely misrepresent someone else's perspective 2. Always use an industrialized western perspective as a synonym for what is unequivocally good, without any inspection or consideration. Disregard anything else. 3. Worship at the altar of the information technology industry
    - vasco 2y ago
      > Always use an industrialized western perspective Who do you think has driven modern medicine and how do you get advanced healthcare without industrialization?
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    This is a good point. And, most of those require civil engineers to accomplish. It's very hard to do that if you don't have a writing system, and, hence, literacy. Pre-literate societies struggle to build up scientific and mathematical knowledge because all knowledge transfer is oral.
    - skrtskrt 2y ago
      Industrialization is like the 1800s-1900s. Not "pre-literacy".
diddypiddy 2y ago
[flagged]
balls187 2y ago
That might be true outside the US; I believe that the standard of living has gone down in the US, due in large part to the pandemic, followed by rampant inflation. The shift away from manufacturing jobs to service jobs also played a role, along with the population boom in major cities. The cities/countries with the highest standards of living all seemingly exist in Europe. EDIT To Add: look at the revolting against McDonald's to see my point. Taking your family to mcdonalds used to be something you didn't really need to think about. Not anymore.
- megaman821 2y ago
  Europe also experienced a pandemic, has even worse inflation and worse unemployment. It could just be cultural attitudes make European cities a more pleasant place to live.
  - balls187 2y ago
    > It could just be cultural attitudes make European cities a more pleasant place to live. Cultural attitudes certainly, particularly around work vs leisure. Also mass transit systems, and social supports for people working in the service industry. The criticisms for europe are that it takes a lot of tax revenue to support those things, bureaucracy, strikes, etc. Im not saying one system is better than the other--just that in the US, despite our massive economic might, our standard of living sucks.
    - kiba 2y ago
      Mass transits and more pleasant places to live are probably correlated with more tax efficient policies. It's just that the USA has accumulated a number of unfair advantages.
- lolinder 2y ago
  This kind of comparison always neglects to consider the fact that any given European country is much smaller and much more homogeneous than the US. Which US state are you comparing to? Using the Human Development Index (HDI) as a passable proxy for standard of living: Mississippi has an HDI of 0.866, about the same as Portugal and somewhat higher than Bulgaria (the lowest HDI in the EU) at 0.799. Massachusetts has an HDI of 0.949, which is about the same as Germany and only a tiny bit lower than #1 Switzerland's 0.967. In other words: both Europe and the US span a wide range of HDI scores, but the European Union has a wider range in both directions. Europe is both better and worse than the US, depending on where in Europe and where in the US you're talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
delfinom 2y ago
> Suicide rates are not at all-time highs, they were much higher during the World Wars and Great Depression. Nah we already exceeded WW2. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/cdc-data-finds-suicides-reached-time-high-2022-rcna99327 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/cdc-data-finds-... > but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II. >U.S. suicides steadily rose from the early 2000s until 2018, when the national rate hit its highest level since 1941. I guess we still haven't exceeded the Great Depression rates but it's really not that hard of a target
- lolinder 2y ago
  Suicide rates during WW1 were hovering around 20 per 100k. During the Great Depression it peaked at 22 per 100k [0]. That's around 50% higher than the 2022 number you cite (14.3 per 100k), which is hard to describe as "really not that far off". EDIT: The comment I replied to has been edited in multiple ways since I replied, so the text in quotes above is no longer present. The comment previously indicated that we had already exceeded "the world wars" (not just WW2) and that we were "really not that far off" from the rates of the Great Depression. Slight meta tangent: OP, in general it's considered good form to reply to people who reply to you rather than just modifying your comment. Calling out edits explicitly (like I've done here) after you've received replies is also considered good form. [0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/29/2022-suicide-rate-historical-chart-comparison-graphic/71737857007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/29/2022-suic...
  - mulmen 2y ago
    I edit a lot so I set the delay in my profile to give me 10 minutes to do so.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      If you edited within ten minutes then something isn't working, because your comment changed multiple times after I replied to it. The delay is supposed to prevent me from seeing it at all until the period is up.

skrtskrt 2y ago

when you visit or live among people or parts of society that that essentially never "modernized" in any meaningful way, the only thing they really need is better healthcare. the rest is a load of crap that is just solving problems created by industrialization and modernization

megaman821 2y ago
Are you talking about lost Amazon tribes? Most places I have visited people have seen real quality of life improvements by having clean water, refrigeration, sewage systems and access to the internet.
- szundi 2y ago
  Yeah yeah, but it’s so romantic that they use bamboo sticks for hunting and killing each other with poisoned arrows while dying of worm infections and shit
  - fuzztester 2y ago
    b-b-but ... 2000 lb bombs, ar-15s, drones, guided missiles, f-15s, heavy artillery are more romantic! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle next up, a total lovefest, icbms firing thermonuclear bombs?
    - Kerb_ 2y ago
      Civilization, I'll stay right here
      - fuzztester 2y ago
        Call Gandhi. google Gandhi Western civilization good idea
- skrtskrt 2y ago
  thank you for reminding me why I don't comment on Hacker News much. 1. Completely misrepresent someone else's perspective 2. Always use an industrialized western perspective as a synonym for what is unequivocally good, without any inspection or consideration. Disregard anything else. 3. Worship at the altar of the information technology industry
  - vasco 2y ago
    > Always use an industrialized western perspective Who do you think has driven modern medicine and how do you get advanced healthcare without industrialization?
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  This is a good point. And, most of those require civil engineers to accomplish. It's very hard to do that if you don't have a writing system, and, hence, literacy. Pre-literate societies struggle to build up scientific and mathematical knowledge because all knowledge transfer is oral.
  - skrtskrt 2y ago
    Industrialization is like the 1800s-1900s. Not "pre-literacy".

diddypiddy 2y ago

[flagged]

balls187 2y ago

That might be true outside the US; I believe that the standard of living has gone down in the US, due in large part to the pandemic, followed by rampant inflation. The shift away from manufacturing jobs to service jobs also played a role, along with the population boom in major cities. The cities/countries with the highest standards of living all seemingly exist in Europe. EDIT To Add: look at the revolting against McDonald's to see my point. Taking your family to mcdonalds used to be something you didn't really need to think about. Not anymore.

megaman821 2y ago
Europe also experienced a pandemic, has even worse inflation and worse unemployment. It could just be cultural attitudes make European cities a more pleasant place to live.
- balls187 2y ago
  > It could just be cultural attitudes make European cities a more pleasant place to live. Cultural attitudes certainly, particularly around work vs leisure. Also mass transit systems, and social supports for people working in the service industry. The criticisms for europe are that it takes a lot of tax revenue to support those things, bureaucracy, strikes, etc. Im not saying one system is better than the other--just that in the US, despite our massive economic might, our standard of living sucks.
  - kiba 2y ago
    Mass transits and more pleasant places to live are probably correlated with more tax efficient policies. It's just that the USA has accumulated a number of unfair advantages.
lolinder 2y ago
This kind of comparison always neglects to consider the fact that any given European country is much smaller and much more homogeneous than the US. Which US state are you comparing to? Using the Human Development Index (HDI) as a passable proxy for standard of living: Mississippi has an HDI of 0.866, about the same as Portugal and somewhat higher than Bulgaria (the lowest HDI in the EU) at 0.799. Massachusetts has an HDI of 0.949, which is about the same as Germany and only a tiny bit lower than #1 Switzerland's 0.967. In other words: both Europe and the US span a wide range of HDI scores, but the European Union has a wider range in both directions. Europe is both better and worse than the US, depending on where in Europe and where in the US you're talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

delfinom 2y ago

> Suicide rates are not at all-time highs, they were much higher during the World Wars and Great Depression. Nah we already exceeded WW2. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/cdc-data-finds-suicides-reached-time-high-2022-rcna99327 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/cdc-data-finds-... > but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II. >U.S. suicides steadily rose from the early 2000s until 2018, when the national rate hit its highest level since 1941. I guess we still haven't exceeded the Great Depression rates but it's really not that hard of a target

lolinder 2y ago
Suicide rates during WW1 were hovering around 20 per 100k. During the Great Depression it peaked at 22 per 100k [0]. That's around 50% higher than the 2022 number you cite (14.3 per 100k), which is hard to describe as "really not that far off". EDIT: The comment I replied to has been edited in multiple ways since I replied, so the text in quotes above is no longer present. The comment previously indicated that we had already exceeded "the world wars" (not just WW2) and that we were "really not that far off" from the rates of the Great Depression. Slight meta tangent: OP, in general it's considered good form to reply to people who reply to you rather than just modifying your comment. Calling out edits explicitly (like I've done here) after you've received replies is also considered good form. [0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/29/2022-suicide-rate-historical-chart-comparison-graphic/71737857007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/29/2022-suic...
- mulmen 2y ago
  I edit a lot so I set the delay in my profile to give me 10 minutes to do so.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    If you edited within ten minutes then something isn't working, because your comment changed multiple times after I replied to it. The delay is supposed to prevent me from seeing it at all until the period is up.