[HN Gopher] The world is awful. The world is much better. The wo...
___________________________________________________________________
The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much
better
Author : colonCapitalDee
Score : 292 points
Date : 2024-02-06 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ourworldindata.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ourworldindata.org)
| phrotoma wrote:
| how is this article dated 2018 using statistics dated 2021?
| frereubu wrote:
| At the bottom of the article: "This is a revised and updated
| version published in February 2023." (I agree that this should
| be near the top, next to the publication date, to make it much
| clearer).
| phrotoma wrote:
| Ah so it does, thank you!
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be
| much better_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32173146 -
| July 2022 (121 comments)
| johngossman wrote:
| Good article. I agree with the sentiment. It is easy to be
| pessimistic, and it is dangerous to be complacent. Recognizing
| that progress is occurring should motivate future actions,
| whereas believing the world is inevitably getting worse, or that
| it will get better on its own, can lead one to give up or
| withdraw from the world.
|
| I caveat this praise with my now instinctive skepticism of all of
| these EA projects coming out of Oxford. It feels like an
| overfunded set of charities.
| BadHumans wrote:
| The world is awful. Millions of children die each year.
|
| The world is much better. Even though children die, we don't have
| nearly as many as we used to.
|
| The world can be much better. Most of these child deaths are
| preventable.
|
| This is how I view the world and it is why it upsets me when
| people voice concern about crime in a city or something like that
| and people respond with "ACKSHUALLY" followed by some sort of
| statistic. It feels like people just want to stay stuck but as
| the author says "to see that a better world is possible, we need
| to see that both are true at the same time: the world is awful,
| and the world is much better."
|
| Being too dismissive of certain concerns is just as bad as being
| too pessimistic.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Usually when people are complaining about crime in a city they
| _literally_ do not know the facts. That 's very different from
| "things are factually better than they've ever been, but we can
| and should do much better."
| colechristensen wrote:
| The two groups that talk about crime are more or less equal
| in their self-delusion. The left-wing folks aggressively deny
| there is any sort of problem and the right-wing folks insist
| such and such a place is a warzone and anyone who goes there
| should be afraid.
|
| Mind you there are plenty of people who are fairly reasonable
| who you don't see talking about these things publicly much,
| usually because the people who respond are so very obnoxious.
|
| You have people denying reality vs. people exaggerating it,
| neither really have very good information.
|
| I have personally experienced both. I left a formerly nicer
| neighborhood that took a turn to avoid robberies and too
| frequent gun shots for downtown where I feel much safer...
| and manage to offend both sides when I mention this.
| whstl wrote:
| Yep. It's like this for lots of other subjects. From war to
| paper straws.
|
| Not saying whether it is wrong or right, but: it is often
| people trying to move the Overton window, or people getting
| manipulated by window movers.
| ajross wrote:
| FWIW: per SF's statistics, both violent and property crime
| rates are at 10+ year lows in every category:
|
| https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-
| rat...
|
| I'm not how you get a "both sides" argument from that data,
| but OK. We're in the same phase of this debate that we are
| with inflation: there was a burst of signal, driven largely
| by the pandemic and related causes, it receeded, but
| argumentation is still informed by feelings and not current
| state.
|
| ( _Edit: and the amount of argumentation below trying to
| refute this one link WITHOUT ALTERNATIVE SUPPORTING
| EVIDENCE is pretty much proof that this isn 't a fight
| about facts._)
| Jensson wrote:
| Statistics from the police is the least accurate way to
| measure minor crimes, those stats mostly tracks how
| active the police is and not how much crime there is.
|
| Or do you believe that Denmark and Sweden has the most
| cases of thefts in the world? These stats has nothing to
| do with how much theft is actually happening.
|
| https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/theft/
| ajross wrote:
| Are there better numbers? It seems like these track
| existing conventional wisdom about the recent crime
| burst, no? You're just trying to throw out the last 2
| years showing a decline? Is that really a reasonable
| argument?
|
| Obviously yes, there's an apples/oranges problem with
| comparing data sets collected in different countries
| under different law enforcement regimes, etc...
|
| But between e.g. 2022 and 2017 in San Francisco
| specifically? I don't see the argument.
|
| (Also important to note that while "Larceny" might be
| plausibly related to police ignoring crime, other things
| like "Murder" are very much not if you aren't accusing
| the police of hiding bodies. And violent crime shows the
| same trend.)
| Jensson wrote:
| It is much more likely that the police changed a bit on
| how they report things than that the population at large
| changed. The real changes gets lost in the noise of
| police reporting changes. Police reporting changes not
| just via bureaucratic decisions but also the feelings of
| the police force in general because it is the people at
| the bottom that decides what to report, which is very
| fickle and can change quickly with reasons like "we catch
| thieves but they just get released, so we stopped
| caring".
|
| Covid likely changed crime rates, yes, but it likely
| changed police reporting rates much more. That goes for
| all kinds of events. Saying crime is down since police
| reporting is down is like saying that kids learn more
| today since they get better grades today than 10 years
| ago.
|
| Edit: You get much better numbers by asking people if
| they have been robbed lately, or asking stores how much
| gets stolen.
| Fargren wrote:
| "Are there better numbers?" is not a question that
| justifies trusting bad numbers. If the best numbers you
| have are known to be unreliable, using them just because
| you don't have better ones is not justified.
|
| Let's say the real amount per year for the last 10 years
| is [100, 110, 120, 130, 140], and you have numbers that
| show [90, 89, 88, 87, 86]. Those numbers are much better
| than [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It would still be absolutely wrong
| to use them to figure out the trend.
|
| If you know your source of data is bad, you must throw it
| out, even if it's the best one you have. If our data is
| bad, we _just don 't know_.
| Kalium wrote:
| There are _probably_ better numbers somewhere. Likely
| several sets worth. One of the things that makes SF 's
| numbers especially thorny is that SFPD engages in a daily
| campaign to deter reporting crime.
|
| This makes the official numbers known unreliable, but
| also means there's lots of room to debate how much more
| reliable any alternative set of numbers might be.
| cm11 wrote:
| We should be careful about the "it's the best we got"
| phase of the argument. It usually doesn't add
| information, but pushes the convo as though it does.
| Presenting numbers is additive, questioning those numbers
| relevancy can be additive. Of course the "best we got"
| might not be good enough to make a call.
|
| In this argument, the sides are something like crime is
| down, crime is up, and don't have enough info. Roughly
| speaking, you're arguing for the first over the second
| whereas the responder is arguing for not enough info.
|
| Even in situations where maybe you have to make a
| decision and don't have great data, if you don't feel
| great about the best info you have, then it might be
| better to use something else like the wisdom or gut
| instinct of the team or what's cheapest or what you're
| most able to walk back later. Data tends to make us lazy
| about digging deeper, it's okay when the data is good,
| but worse no data when it's not so relevant.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| Just about every category in your chart shows a reversal
| from a downward trend before 2019 into an upward trend
| from 2019 onward. The precipitous and unusual drop at the
| end of the axis reflects a lack of data.
|
| Just about every kind of crime is up in Portland as well
| over 2018 numbers, with homicides almost quadrupling 3
| years later.
|
| The "both sides" should be considered, because Portland
| isn't a war-zone like the far right would portray it as,
| but it's significantly worse than it used to be with no
| reversal in sight. There are worse places to live in the
| US today, but I'm not off-base for wanting safety and
| local quality of life to improve rather than decline when
| compared to previous years.
|
| And sure, the next thing to blame is the pandemic
| recovery. We all faced drastic changes over the last few
| years, but objectively some of our cities (like Portland
| where I live) are not recovering as well or at all
| compared to national trends.
|
| And as for Portland, most of our deteriorating trends
| started before the pandemic. 2020-2022 just accelerated
| their trajectories.
| ajross wrote:
| > Just about every category in your chart shows a
| reversal from a downward trend before 2019 into an upward
| trend from 2019 onward
|
| _Literally_ every category in that chart shows a
| reduction in crime over the last year. You 're inventing
| a "trend" by extrapolating a line straight across an
| outlier (the covid pandemic). No one would look at that
| data and say crime is getting worse. You'd say crime
| _got_ worse and is now back at baseline.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| What does the sentence after the one you quoted say? I
| forgot.
|
| A line graph showing a precipitous drop in the most
| recent time bucket available is a red flag that you
| shouldn't trust that data point.
| ajross wrote:
| Why? It's not a real time measurement, they're just
| adding up the crimes from the 2023 data. Do you expect
| the 2023 numbers to be revised? Was that true for earlier
| years? Seems unlikely.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I like SF, and it's violent crime rate isn't too bad.
|
| But, c'mon, you can't point to property crime and say
| "this isn't a fight about facts" when it's the _4th
| highest property crime per capita city in the entire
| country_ in a country that already has high crime for the
| developed world.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_citie
| s_b...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Hard science people tend to worship data and dismiss
| anecdotes, but a situation where the data is
| incomplete/incorrect (for whatever reason) and anecdotes
| which point in a different direction are, in fact,
| correct, is perfectly plausible. For example, the former
| Soviet Bloc was unmatched in its ability to produce
| impressive statistics of various achievements, but the
| real living standard of the people would strike you in
| the face the moment you would see it. Which is why the
| secret police often restricted free movement of Western
| visitors.
|
| SF is pretty bad. A few weeks ago, Czech TV reporters
| were robbed at a gunpoint in broad daylight [0]. Stuff
| like that simply doesn't happen in Prague, Warsaw or even
| war-torn, PTSD-heavy Kyiv. It rather corresponds to South
| African standards of safety. IDK if you can explain it
| away with positively sounding statistics, but as Feynman
| says, "The first principle is that you must not fool
| yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
|
| If a culture war coded topic like crime is being
| discussed and tribal loyalty kicks in, I can imagine
| people simply ignoring anything that goes contrary to
| their position and rallying to the flag.
|
| [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/czech-
| journalists-cover...
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I wonder what Feynman and Robert Trivers (not a hard
| science person at all) would make of each other.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| FWIW, with more guns than people, the USA is the most
| armed country in the world. It follows that being robbed
| at gunpoint isn't something that is frequent in a country
| where there's only 1 gun per 40 people. The same people
| arguing about violent crime in the USA could do
| themselves a huge favor by being open to more gun
| control, but by and large, they are against it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilia
| n_g...
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| I could just as easily list off several countries that
| have strict gun control and at the same time also violent
| crime rates (including those with guns) that are far
| worse than general levels in the U.S. gun control by
| itself isn't the problem when it comes to violence.
| Other, largely social and political factors are much more
| important, but that's not a neat ideological talking
| point so it gets ignored more often.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The left-wing folks aggressively deny there is any sort
| of problem
|
| I have to admit, I don't think I've heard any left-wing
| folks saying that at all.
| klipt wrote:
| > The left-wing folks aggressively deny there is any sort
| of problem and the right-wing folks insist such and such a
| place is a warzone and anyone who goes there should be
| afraid.
|
| Some left wing folks will agree you should be afraid but
| only if you're female/black etc because men/white people
| might attack you. But they'll insist if you're a white man
| then you're protected from crime by "privilege".
|
| Which is interesting because statistically men are much
| more often victims of violent crime.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _The left-wing folks aggressively deny there is any sort of
| problem_
|
| I'm not familiar with anyone, at least in the mainstream of
| politics, doing this. I think it is important to note the
| mainstream, because we do have tons of elected officials
| and mainstream cable news talking heads making the
| "warzone" argument (and deliberately mischaracterizing any
| attempts at police or justice system reform).
| deanCommie wrote:
| > The left-wing folks aggressively deny there is any sort
| of problem and the right-wing folks insist such and such a
| place is a warzone and anyone who goes there should be
| afraid.
|
| This is contextual and is misleading without it.
|
| But it does accurately represent the ineptitude of the left
| and why it always loses in these situations. Here's how it
| goes:
|
| Problem: Society has people that are poor and mentally
| challenged. Both turn to drugs to cope. Drugs are illegal,
| increased demand increases criminality. Drug use
| exacerbates poverty, homelessness. Society becomes full of
| drug users committing petty crimes, and drug dealers
| perpetuating major crimes to contribute to supply. Not to
| mention addicts dying in the streets from overdoses.
|
| All of this in general make cities undesirable and less
| safe.
|
| RIGHT-WING Solution: LET'S GET TOUGH ON CRIME.
|
| Drug dealers get arrested. Drug users get arrested.
|
| For a little while the streets are cleaner and safer, and
| everyone is happy. But the root cause hasn't been
| addressed, so the same problems just return.
|
| LEFT-WING Solution: Drug use is a symptom not a root cause.
| And criminality is inherent to drug trade because drugs are
| illegal. If we legalize or decriminalize drugs we reduce
| the criminal element. If we give people safe injection
| sites they don't have to die from overdoses. And if we fund
| social programs we can get people out of poverty, off the
| streets, and into housing.
|
| PROBLEM 1: All of this is a lot harder than sending a dozen
| cops into a tent city and arresting a dozen homeless
| people.
|
| PROBLEM 2: Even if carried out PERFECTLY, there becomes an
| intermediate step where homeless people are seen being
| given funds or housing from the government which makes
| poor-but-not-homeless, and even middle-class people get mad
| saying "I work so hard, how come this person who is clearly
| a loser is getting all these handouts? This makes people
| petty and the right wing seize on it.
|
| PROBLEM 3: Going soft on drug use means in the short term
| you have people using drugs more openly, but not being
| arrested for it. This makes people grossed out and the
| right wing seize on it.
|
| Before you know it and before any meaningful improvements
| have been made, you have right wing candidates screaming
| that all of the problems of society are because the left is
| too soft, and we need to get tougher. And they usually
| succeed and they usually win. Because the best the left
| wing can do is point to statistics that show fewer homeless
| people are dying of poverty or drug overdoses, and the
| truth is most humans in society just don't care. So they
| deny and minimize.
|
| The reality is that out of sight out of mind, most gentle
| moderate even somewhat progressive people would be just as
| happy if homeless people "disappeared". They don't want to
| think about what that means. So they vote left when they
| feel guilty, and right when they're annoyed.
| Throw73747 wrote:
| Arguing about "facts" and statistics, when it is literally
| impossible to report basic crimes like robbery to police is
| pointless!
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| What do you mean it's literally impossible to report
| robberies to the police?
| Throw73747 wrote:
| They just refuse to take report, with some bullshit
| excuse. Like under $950 it is misdemeanor..
|
| Everything in shop is locked up, but crime is down!
| zhivota wrote:
| Police stop taking reports of crimes they will not pursue
| or won't be prosecuted.
|
| There is no "fact" saying how much crime is occurring,
| only a snapshot of how many reports were accepted and
| filed by the police.
| threemux wrote:
| If you report a minor robbery to the police in any large
| American city and you aren't a public figure, there is
| functionally a 0% chance of them following up on it much
| less solving it. The only benefit for reporting is if you
| plan to make an insurance claim. If not, there is no
| point to reporting a minor robbery to the police.
|
| Robberies and property crimes are hugely underreported in
| official statistics because the first time you try to
| report one you realize that it makes a bad situation
| worse by wasting your time after the event. That is what
| they're talking about.
| feoren wrote:
| Other benefits of reporting it, other than insurance, is
| that it makes these kinds of statistics more accurate,
| and that in the unlikely event that they "accidentally"
| solve the case, it'll be easier for you to get your stuff
| back. The latter can happen if they arrest someone for
| some other reason and find what appears to be a bunch of
| stolen property or something. It's not likely, but it
| seems like it'd still be worth reporting the crime.
|
| But you make a good point that a lackluster police
| response does lower the incidence of reporting crimes,
| effectively doctoring crime statistics. You'd have to
| evaluate whether this trend has increased or decreased
| relative to historical periods when factoring that into
| any comparison, though.
| sp0rk wrote:
| > If you report a minor robbery to the police in any
| large American city and you aren't a public figure, there
| is functionally a 0% chance of them following up on it
| much less solving it.
|
| I have known people that had stolen things returned
| because the police found the items while
| investigating/arresting the thief for other crimes. It
| seems foolish to not bother with filing a report just
| because they aren't actively investigating every report
| they receive.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > This is how I view the world and it is why it upsets me when
| people voice concern about crime in a city or something like
| that and people respond with "ACKSHUALLY" followed by some sort
| of statistic.
|
| Most people voicing "concern" are saying "crime is increasing"
| and usually blaming either current politicians and/or
| progressive policies for the "increase". It's almost always
| accompanied by either a "vote for me" or some screed on how we
| have "gone soft on crime".
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| Crime rates are a prime battlefield for culture wars.
|
| The fact that talk about crime rates is usually an attack on
| progressive policies usually means progressives usually also
| respond in an ACKSHUALLY manner followed by a wall of
| anarchist crime theory which must account for all (not just
| some) of any disparity, because if it does not then you have
| stabbed your own side in the back.
|
| Whatever you think about Elizier Yudowsky, I think he hit
| this one right on the nail.
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-
| deb...
| fasthands9 wrote:
| Crime is obviously down over the decades, which is very
| important, but I think it would be silly to deny there was a
| major uptick in murders in 2020.
|
| https://www.axios.com/2023/12/28/us-murder-violent-crime-
| rat...
|
| There are obviously lots of reasons for this having nothing
| to do with crime policy, such as the economic shock of covid.
| That being said, I don't think its true at all it is
| straightforwardly settled how to reduce crime.
|
| Pretty much all people I have read on this suggest penalizing
| gun possession crimes more would decrease the violent crime
| rate. It's part of the reason murder rate in places like NY
| is relatively low. That said, prosecuting more people for
| probation violations or gun possessions is a a policy that
| cuts against both conservative ideology (because they are pro
| gun) and progressive ideology (because it will require a
| larger prison population that will be disproportionately
| minority)
| nabla9 wrote:
| When people say crime is getting out of hand, while it's
| actually decreasing, they are just wrong and ignorant.
| amelius wrote:
| You can blame the media. And social media included.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| That's a bit reductive. It can be true that globally (or in
| some superset) crime has decreased while in some local
| context it remains the same or has become concentrated (e.g.
| worse for people in that context).
|
| This whole article and commentary around it has also
| highlighted another issue for me: It's hard to have nuanced
| conversations about complex problems that can be simplified
| or generalized to something causes a difference in perception
| about what actual problems *are*.
| nabla9 wrote:
| When people say crime is getting out of hand, while it's
| actually decreasing in the context they mean it, they are
| just wrong and ignorant.
|
| This is common bias. People consistently think that crime
| is getting worse.
| rcoveson wrote:
| So there are people out there, not in this thread, who
| are wrong when they say things that are incorrect?
| kapp_in_life wrote:
| In many metro areas crime is higher than it was before
| COVID. Sure the levels may be decreasing below the 2020
| peak levels, but relative to 2019 or earlier its
| oftentimes still higher.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Most crime goes unreported.I think blanket statements this
| are just wrong and ignorant.
| acuozzo wrote:
| Does "it's actually decreasing" mean "it's decreasing on
| average in the US" or "it's decreasing on average in every
| county in the US"?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Many many interesting points of information are lost when
| averages are taken. Averages can lie. If some working class
| people objectively feel their lives have worsened from crime,
| it's "progressives" in particular who need to be _listening_
| even if some of the facts appear to be wrong. It 's quite
| possible critical theorists and sociologists and various
| experts are missing some important variance.
| p0wn wrote:
| I wish the world was much butter. It would be more tasty.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| The moon is much cheese.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Ha! I didn't catch that. Thanks
| gumby wrote:
| Yes but deaths due to coronary heart disease would increase.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> It feels like people just want to stay stuck_
|
| They don't necessarily want to stay stuck, but they generally
| don't want to put in the hard work to see change through. More
| likely, as you point out, people would rather talk about it.
| That requires way less effort.
|
| But what can you do with that? If not the "ACKSHUALLY"
| response, then it's just going to be:
|
| * "The crime is bad in this city."
|
| * "Yeah, I agree. So, um... did you hear about Taylor Swift?"
|
| Either way, it's just an acknowledgement of something having
| been said. There is nothing actionable.
| b450 wrote:
| > This is how I view the world and it is why it upsets me when
| people voice concern about crime in a city or something like
| that and people respond with "ACKSHUALLY" followed by some sort
| of statistic. It feels like people just want to stay stuck but
| as the author says "to see that a better world is possible, we
| need to see that both are true at the same time: the world is
| awful, and the world is much better."
|
| I don't think people "want to stay stuck". I think it is simply
| the state of our polarized polity, and the mistrustful, zero-
| sum approach to discourse that it breeds. Even a plain factual
| statement feels like it's signaling some political allegiance
| or pushing some agenda, and that feels threatening. I'm not
| placing myself above this phenomenon, either. Your choice of
| example fact - something about 'crime in a city' - feels like a
| right-wing shibboleth (and after all, even if there are
| objective facts, the particular facts we recognize as salient,
| the narrative patterns of fact that we use to make political
| arguments, are of course driven by our values and political
| allegiances). Maybe I'm off-base about your example, but really
| my point is that it feels that way, so discussions of politics
| feel scary, even when they stick to matters of putatively
| objective fact. Apologies for shoehorning in the
| Israel/Palestine issue, but I thought this piece[1] was
| eloquent on (something like) this phenomenon:
|
| > [...]if, as many feel at this moment, the recognition of one
| "side" comes at the expense of the other, the expression of
| empathy for one is the refusal of empathy for another. Many
| seem to feel that no hand is bare--that all hands are holding
| knives, pointing in opposite directions. This moment is
| characterized by a widespread conviction that recognition can
| only go in one direction: that any show of empathy toward
| Israelis is tantamount to supporting the oppression of
| Palestinians, and that any show of empathy toward Palestinians
| is tantamount to supporting the massacre on October.
|
| > Those who subscribe to this dichotomy see attempts to
| recognize all suffering as disingenuous and manipulative. They
| sometimes complain that symmetrical empathy entails symmetrical
| judgment, symmetrical condemnation, or attribution of
| symmetrical power. And since they reject these equivalences,
| they reject the equivalence of empathy.
|
| [1] https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/letter-from-israel/
| zb3 wrote:
| Millions of children die each year - this could be prevented
| simply by not making them - but somehow this view is not
| understood on HN at all.
|
| This world is awful and will be awful, so don't force others to
| become its new victims.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| We have a natural drive to procreate. It's hard to resist
| that drive when the other option is "die alone"
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| Millions of potential intelligent beings that never get a
| chance to see the universe - I see that as a very sad thing.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| There is a selection bias driving the conversation itself. The
| people most likely to voice a criticism about a given subject
| are the people who are most _engaged_ with that subject.
|
| Engagement itself is diverse. It can be driven by genuine
| interest, and it can be generated by political narrative.
|
| What is most important is the criticism itself. Is it valuable?
| To whom? The more people there are voicing criticisms, the more
| difficult it is to answer these questions.
|
| The usefulness of democracy is that we can coordinate our
| criticisms into coherent proposals, and vote on them.
|
| The tragedy of democracy is that we must coordinate our
| criticisms into coherent proposals, and vote on them.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > The tragedy of democracy is that we must coordinate our
| criticisms into coherent proposals, and vote on them.
|
| Despite classes in civics and debating at some good schools
| we are mostly given no training on how to do this as kids.
|
| Instead we are raised by "Hollywood diplomacy", which is
| deeply confrontational and revolves around vengeance and gun
| fights.
|
| Polarisation isn't just in the "environment" but in the lack
| of tools we are given to work with.
|
| There are actually long-form studies in things like Peace
| Studies (Columbia, George Washington Uni, Kroc Institute,
| Nottingham Uni in UK)
|
| I spent some time with graduate of a peace studies programme,
| which I initially mocked. But she introduced me to all kinds
| of ideas like those of Habermas and Discourse Theory.
|
| Most serious [fn] programmes on negotiation and diplomacy
| touch on this.
|
| How we get ordinary folk to take on board more of that is
| challenging but urgent. Sadly most of "western" life has
| conflict escalation built in as a value.
|
| EDIT: added some links for the curious [0,1]
|
| [fn] There's plenty of crappy MBA business type "how to get
| what you want" type programmes - I am absolutely not talking
| about those!
|
| [0] https://iep.utm.edu/habermas/
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_rationality
| banannaise wrote:
| The counter-argument to "crime is too high" isn't "that can't
| be improved", it's "you're looking at the wrong thing, and to
| target 'crime' in certain ways actually makes the world _worse_
| ".
| zeroCalories wrote:
| These are contradictory statements because they are politically
| loaded. The "things are alright, and are getting better, but we
| can do even better" party doesn't energize people, and no one
| wants to be that party, even if it accurately describes things.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I'm looking forward to the TAAAAGBBWCDEB Party rallies:
| -- What do we want? -- Gradual change! -- When do
| we want it? -- In due course!
|
| I appreciate the local approach to referenda. A referendum can
| be brought "solve X with Y!", but the government then has a
| chance to say, "we agree that X is a problem, but we think it'd
| be more effectively addressed via Z". Then we all vote for
| either Y, or Z, or (the most popular response) "X ain't so
| broke; don't fix it"
| akkad33 wrote:
| The book [factfulness](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/348900
| 15-factfulness) is precisely about this. They present how the
| world is improving in an irrefutable way but media and
| politicians would only focus on the negative. The authors are
| Swedish, so they talk first hand about Sweden, and their
| experiences how drastically Sweden changed in the last 2
| generations is amazing
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| An even better book recommendation (if you like the article) is
| "Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation
| to Build a Sustainable Planet" by Hannah Ritchie. Hannah
| Ritchie is head of research for ourworldindata.org; the book
| grew very directly out of the linked article.
|
| Ritchie credits a lecture by Hans Rosling (one of the authors
| of Factfulness) in the forward for being what turned her from a
| pessimistic biology student into the person that writes a book
| like this.
|
| A common criticism of the linked article is that "sure child
| mortality is going down, but what about X". Where X is climate
| change, species decline, quality of life, et cetera. The book
| addresses most "X"'s.
| ebcode wrote:
| Not sure if this is the same lecture that Ritchie cites, but
| for anyone who hasn't seen this one by Rosling, it's worth a
| watch: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_best_stats_
| you_ve...
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| Everyone reading Factfulness should also take a look at
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328759928_Good_Thin...
|
| I've always regarded this book as being blatant neoliberal
| propaganda.
| LastTrain wrote:
| Can you name a couple examples of blatant neoliberal
| propaganda in the book? Who is the propaganda being
| perpetrated on behalf of? Who is funding it? If it doesn't
| have these latter elements, you might want to consider the
| possibility that it is simply a work that you disagree with.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| I don't need to defend a personal opinion if I don't want
| to. I believe the book is an 'everything is fine' meme in
| book format, pandering to the current oligarchy who's
| arguing that everything is going in the right direction and
| direct action is unnecessary. Other people replying to the
| same comment have articulated it better than I did.
| Whenever a book like this comes along and the real
| capitalists start reviewing and recommending it, it
| triggers my bullshit sensors.
|
| You might want to consider the possibility that it is
| simply an opinion that you disagree with and move on.
| mistermann wrote:
| Symbols aside, dissemination of biased, misinformative, and
| arguably harmful information is not necessarily done with
| Ill intent.
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| What is a summary of the criticism? Is the data wrong or in
| some way misrepresented? It seems like the author doesn't
| like the attention Hans received.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| From the wiki page
|
| > Christian Berggren, a Swedish professor of industrial
| management, has questioned the authors' claims and
| suggested that Rosling's own thinking shows a bias towards
| Pollyannaism. Particularly, Berggren criticized the authors
| for understating the importance of the European migrant
| crisis, the environmental impacts of the Anthropocene, and
| continued global population growth. Furthermore, Berggren
| remarks that "Factfulness includes many graphs of 'bad
| things in decline' and 'good things on the rise' but not a
| single graph of problematic phenomena that are on the
| rise." It "employs a biased selection of variables, avoids
| analysis of negative trends, and does not discuss any of
| the serious challenges related to continual population
| growth." Berggren raises concerns that the simplistic
| worldview this book offers could have serious consequences.
| FredPret wrote:
| Two more books in this vein are Fewer, Richer, Greener by
| Siegel and Abundance by Diamandis and Kotler
| tetha wrote:
| You make me wonder if this isn't the marketing/sales vs dev/ops
| misalignment.
|
| Marketing and Sales focus on the good parts of our software.
| Simple usability, high stability, great reactive customer
| support, ... Apparently, during corona, we were the only
| reliable vendor for a national support hotline by a massive
| margin, and chaotically on-boarded call-agents had the least
| number of issues with our system.
|
| But then, I as a team lead in ops have to wonder why a single
| priority ticket didn't meet SLA. Why a routine update caused 4
| minutes of downtime. Why a usually stable provider ripped a
| system away for 3 minutes. Why strange cache timeout
| interactions caused some class of requests to take 30s+ to
| respond.
|
| My world is very much a world of shitty non-working janky
| software and it is my job to fix and improve it. It might be
| one of the better solutions in our market and other people may
| be able to sell it to happy customers, but in my world it's a
| janky and broken piece of shit with a million things to fix.
|
| And looking at the nation I live in... that's honestly not that
| far away.
| rco8786 wrote:
| I run into this all the time w/ engineers I work with.
|
| I always tell them the story of the mechanic. The mechanic
| works tirelessly every day fixing Toyota Camrys. For years on
| end, he stares at broken Toyota Camrys. He knows every bolt,
| and every failure point across decades of Toyota Camrys.
|
| He is utterly and thoroughly convinced that Toyota Camrys are
| unreliable hunks of junk. After all, he sees them broken _all
| the time_.
|
| What he doesn't see are the 100s of thousands of Toyota
| Camrys loggings hundreds of thousands of miles on the road,
| perfectly intact with no mechanical issues. His vision is
| completely skewed by his day to day responsibilities.
|
| Same thing for us in software. It's our job to see the dirty
| edge cases. To notice when something goes wrong for 5
| minutes. etc. Our job is to automate everything - so by
| definition, we don't see the thousands or millions of
| interactions between our customers and our software that go
| exactly as planned, because they're completely automated away
| from us. Completely invisible. We have a skewed vision
| because of our day to day responsibilities.
| imjonse wrote:
| The problem with the world improving in an irrefutable way _on
| average_ is that this can be and is used to defend the status
| quo in almost any field and can lead to complacency and a false
| sense of optimism. The world became better due to science,
| technology, various policies, cultural changes, etc. and will
| only improve if these are continued. It is not always clear
| what brought improvement and whether that sort of improvement
| will keep scaling. This is just my long-winded way of saying
| that I don 't like it when people say the system is great,
| don't change anything, don't complain, and in a few more
| generations we'll all be fine.
| Jensson wrote:
| The problem with "fight the status quo" people is that they
| tend to demand more authoritarianism and centralization to
| fight something that isn't that bad. Authoritarianism tend to
| lead to worse outcomes and hurt progress, things progress
| faster with liberal ideals than authoritarian ideals.
| shredprez wrote:
| There's nothing about a "fight the status quo" mentality
| that inherently favors authoritarianism and it's not
| helpful to claim otherwise.
|
| That said, it is helpful to remember both knowing- and
| unconscious authoritarians will twist _any_ framework into
| an excuse to establish and flex authority -- that's their
| whole modus operandi, after all.
| imjonse wrote:
| some variants of 'fight the status quo' are explicitly
| opposing the centralization of power and the too big to
| fail entities in non-authoritarian societies.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| If by "centralization" you mean giving more power to
| central entities that can intervene to fight local abuses
| and coordinate policies, I don't see a path were we can do
| without it.
|
| We're in this situation in no small part because big enough
| companies can just buy their way when facing local
| entities, and the only recourse that is working is to ask a
| higher up regulator to intervene. Weakening the regulation
| entities makes it basically impossible to have anything
| done.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| the improvement isn't even.
|
| It seems obvious, but even that little bit of nuance escapes
| far too many people, most especially those whose livelihood
| is to talk about it.
| circuit10 wrote:
| Focusing on the bad is natural and makes sense because that's
| what can be improved, but I feel like your mental health will
| be better if you focus on the bad when it's productive and
| you can do something about it, and at other times realise
| that things aren't that bad
| ordu wrote:
| _> this can be and is used to defend the status quo in almost
| any field and can lead to complacency and a false sense of
| optimism_
|
| So, should we stick to lies about world becoming worse to not
| become complacent?
|
| It is a highly politicized approach to the truth. The truth
| must be kept out of reach of political thinking. We need to
| keep our optimism at levels based on facts, not on our
| political goals. We need to stick to the truth based on
| empirical data even if it is not aligned with our political
| goals. At least if world wants to become much better.
|
| I hate the way politicians argue their points. They ignore
| anything good about their opponents and anything bad about
| their own ideas. And maybe this is the reason why our world
| is not great.
|
| _> I don 't like it when people say the system is great_
|
| I don't think anyone saying that. But from the other hand,
| our system is much better then it might be, and we'd better
| remember that, because if it wasn't, if we were in a local
| minimum, then we could change it in any direction to make it
| better. We need to remember that we are not at a minimum or a
| maximum, we need to think carefully about gradients before
| deciding were to move. So maybe we should say that our world
| is great, to not break it, to not make it worse?
| zubairq wrote:
| I read "factfulness", really opened my eyes!
| rco8786 wrote:
| One of my favorite books. Changed my whole worldview (and I
| _already_ had a positive world view before reading).
|
| I've recommended this book to people probably 1,000 times.
| s_dev wrote:
| > They present how the world is improving in an irrefutable way
| but media and politicians would only focus on the negative.
|
| It's worth noting this 'world' that is constantly improving
| exists only for people.
|
| I routinely counter this with the analogy: that's like a
| dentist saying your teeth are better than they've ever been --
| not only that; they're getting better but at the same time your
| gums are screwed. Are those teeth dependant on those gums you
| might ask. Yeah.
|
| Every serious envoirnmental science paper seems to conclude the
| same thing: biodiversity is collapsing. On the whole, the world
| we live in is worse than the past. Examples during the earths
| history that aren't really from external forces e.g. when the
| moon crashed in to earth, after asteroids, early earth
| volcanoes etc. are different and not under our control.
| dsign wrote:
| As far as I can see, you are totally correct. As it is the
| post you are replying to. Which begs the question: how can
| the state of all of humanity improve without damaging even
| more the environment? Will we ever confront that question
| honestly?
| titzer wrote:
| The answer is that birth rate needs to decline and the
| human population needs to level off and then also decline
| to sustainable levels. We're in overshoot right now and no
| amount of economic development (read: growth) is going to
| fix that. We need degrowth, and the only way that is
| achievable without harming standard of living is to have
| fewer humans. The only way to have fewer humans without
| murdering or starving a bunch is for population to level
| and drop off naturally.
|
| It's hard to even have this conversation without being
| branded an eco-fascist, but there it is. We are just too
| many.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Birth rate is already declining everywhere. The declining
| death rate is what causes population growth.
|
| Stage 2-3:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
|
| The only thing, that appears hard to grasp is the already
| declining birth rate for africa since quite some time (go
| google it). It would be much more effective for fascists
| to argue for a higher mortality rate but that would
| require the understandig of the demographic transition
| none the less.
|
| To end constructively: What we need is better wealth
| distribution for even better health care to accelerate
| this process. You need to understand that better living
| standards helps us platoe. Maybe advocate for that.
|
| > The only way to have fewer humans without murdering or
| starving a bunch is for population to level and drop off
| naturally.
|
| Our planet could easily support +10 billion people. Its
| also a matter of wealth distibution. You know that "4
| planets consumption rate" stuff for US citizens? This
| turns the responsibitly from the fertile poor to the rich
| consumers. I would say, only focusing on the poor and not
| the rich to hinder wealth distribution justifies the
| insult of an eco-fascist. The problem here is, that
| right-wingers stop their train of thought at "too much
| people" and "look at birth rate" ("another thought
| process finished successfully") which your comment was
| all about.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > _The answer is that birth rate needs to decline and the
| human population needs to level off and then also decline
| to sustainable levels._
|
| I agree that's _an_ answer, but is it _the_ answer?
|
| It seems like reproduction rates in wealthy countries
| trend closer towards replacement levels, so perhaps you
| "just" need to get everybody's standard of living up to
| western levels to take population growth out of the
| equation.
|
| Then you're left with supporting roughly our current
| population level which seems... entirely feasible?
|
| Between existing but underutilized techniques like
| fission, renewables, smarter land use and management for
| agriculture (read: focus on producing more efficient
| crops and less on the intensive stuff like cows),
| retrofitting buildings with better insulation, and
| building out more efficient transit, it seems like we
| could get pretty close with current levels of technology.
|
| Nevermind the developments we continue to make. Fusion
| power would immediately solve a _lot_ of problems.
| titzer wrote:
| > Then you're left with supporting roughly our current
| population level which seems... entirely feasible?
|
| That doesn't match data I've seen. For example, even the
| Wikipedia article on carrying capacity
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity), second
| paragraph, states there are a number of lines of
| scientific evidence that we are already over capacity of
| Earth today. One project
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day) does
| pretty intense data analysis to quantify how far we are
| over that capacity. The summary is, yes, we are
| definitely in overshoot, and all economic development to
| raise standard of living is making it worse.
|
| But it's even worse than that. We aren't just exceeding
| the carrying capacity, it is _diminishing_ as we reduce
| biodiversity and biomass through land use (read:
| obliterating wildlife and forests), overfishing, and
| over-industrialization of agriculture, which kills
| healthy soils.
|
| > Between existing but underutilized techniques like
| fission, renewables, smarter land use and management for
| agriculture
|
| It's not just about producing more energy. We are
| consuming _everything_ too much, from biomass to raw
| materials, even fresh water.
|
| > Fusion power would immediately solve a lot of problems.
|
| It might reduce CO2 consumption but ironically it will
| increase per capita energy consumption, which encourages
| even more environmental destruction by making everything
| cheaper to build and buy. So more land use and more
| consumption.
| ytx wrote:
| Unfortunately the assumption of real growth is very baked
| into things like social security, medicare, etc. There's
| no way to de-grow without an increased burden for those
| working to take care of a larger non-working aging
| cohort.
|
| A deeper problem is that the benefits / "slack room"
| provided by real growth are constantly eradicated because
| people's wants (and needs) keep growing along
| commensurately.
|
| Some changing expectations are fairly uncontroversial,
| e.g. better medical technology and doctor training costs
| more. Others are arguably less good, e.g. private jets
| (or taken to the extreme, passenger planes in general!)
| melagonster wrote:
| this will happen. when people are getting rich, they
| prefer to have less kids. UN predicted the largest number
| of population is 12 billion in future thirty years, then
| population start to diminish.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| > We need degrowth, and the only way that is achievable
| without harming standard of living is to have fewer
| humans
|
| Why are you confident that having fewer humans would help
| with the standard of living? Doesn't most of the scarcity
| of what we consume come from the labor necessary to
| produce it, rather than the cost of physical stuff?
|
| With food for example, for every dollar you spend on food
| only about 15 cents is actually buying food items from
| the farmer and the rest of it goes it to the work of
| processing, packaging, transporting, selling, servicing,
| etc
|
| (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-dollar-
| series/do...)
|
| With fewer people, those things become even more scarce.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Not until our infatuation with constant growth is
| confronted. Currently all major economies focus on
| growth(GPD), and any sign of slowdown is essentially a
| doomsday scenario. We have gotten massive efficiency gains
| in almost all labor intensive work, and while this means
| more goods and services can be pumped out to increase
| global wealth, it also means a rapid degradation of the
| environment.
| adventured wrote:
| > how can the state of all of humanity improve without
| damaging even more the environment?
|
| It can't. There are three to four billion young, new
| consumers coming on in the third world over the next 30-50
| years, and they want what the first world has. And there's
| no fair argument to telling them they can't have it or
| strive for it.
|
| That means enormous additional coal power plant production
| and emissions output.
|
| Just ask India and China, they can't build coal power fast
| enough. Next comes Africa's energy build-out, and it will
| only partially be green, the rest will be coal. Take
| Africa's next billion new consumers and give that block the
| coal output of China, that's the end of the world as we
| know it (if the climate change forecasts are correct).
|
| There's no stopping it now. Just enjoy your life, the
| future is set. Unless someone has an epic cheap energy
| breakthrough ready to go right now (so that we can have it
| deployed fully within 30-50 years).
|
| Just what China and India are adding alone is enough to end
| the world. You could immediately cut US emissions in half
| and it wouldn't matter at all to the expansion going on in
| Asia. And again that's before we even get to what's about
| to happen in Africa. No matter how many times you bring
| this up to the green crowd, they just ignore it
| aggressively, pretending that doing little token virtue
| signaling things in one market (we cut emissions 5% in NY
| state, it's amazing!) is going to actually contribute
| meaningfully to stopping the avalanche. Anything that
| doesn't involve massively slashing the coal output of China
| and India (and preventing its rise elsewhere), is
| meaningless.
| paganel wrote:
| The part of 4.4% children worldwide die vs. in the European Union
| 0.47% of all children die forgets to mention that the EU has
| much, much fewer children (comparatively speaking, as in children
| per women) compared to the places where child mortality rate is
| still (comparatively) high, i.e. places like Central and East
| Africa.
|
| Which is to say that were we to really want to make Africa reach
| European levels of (lower) child mortality that would also mean
| that the same Africa will start have much fewer children, at the
| same levels Europe is right now, which, adding it all up, means
| that we will end up having fewer children as a whole (for our
| entire planet, that is). Which means that this policy of trying
| to make the world "better" would end up actually making it worst,
| that is it will make us (the human species) have (much) fewer
| children in the future.
| throw3450 wrote:
| Having fewer children globally would make the world a better
| place. Less people with better quality of life is better than
| more with much worse quality of life.
| huytersd wrote:
| Birth rates in Africa are already on their slow journey to
| decline. At the very least they're dropping. Maybe we can
| expect a similar trajectory to India that reduced its birth
| rate from 6 to below replacement rate of 1.9 in about 20 years.
| johngossman wrote:
| This sort of utilitarian calculus isn't even believed by
| utilitarians. Simply having more people doesn't make the world
| better (or worse.)
|
| This comment reminds me of the Robert Silverberg novel "The
| World Inside" where the world is dominated by a belief that
| reproduction is the highest good.
| paganel wrote:
| > Simply having more people doesn't make the world better
|
| That's literally what the original post says, that we should
| have more children alive (by less of them dying). I tried
| explaining how trying to have less children die will make us
| have fewer (alive) children as a whole.
|
| I have also not mentioned anything about utilitarianism, I
| was following Max Roser's logic on this (I personally find
| that a Northern guy like Roser writing about what Africa
| should do about its children is pretty colonialist, but
| that's not relevant to this post).
| leipert wrote:
| Just can recommend this great talk:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezVk1ahRF78
|
| Amount of kids is strongly linked to child mortality and access
| to health care access.
| renewiltord wrote:
| California cut PMR and IMR over the last two decades. By that
| time, the state had already hit the demographic decline.
| opportune wrote:
| One day we'll collectively realize how damaging constant access
| to "news" (in the modern day, engagement-optimized
| despair/outrage/fear porn) is on our mental health. Until then
| we'll never be able to square the circle of how things can be so
| bad while our actual immediate lives are perfectly fine
| vitiral wrote:
| Tao Te Ching 29, Stephen Mitchell
|
| Do you want to improve the world?
|
| I don't think it can be done.
|
| The world is sacred.
|
| It can't be improved.
|
| If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it. If you treat it like an
| object, you'll lose it.
| swayvil wrote:
| I think you can improve yourself. Is that the same as improving
| the world?
|
| I mean, if you are a worm then you see the world through worm's
| eyes.
|
| Then, if you become a butterfly, you see the world through
| butterfly's eyes.
|
| So the world is transformed for the better. Right?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| The world will end in a technologically enabled autocracy, with
| private robot armies controlled by the elites that enslave
| humanity and cull the population.
|
| Democracy will be obsolete soon once mass media and social media
| can manipulate people at will, via AI agents of misinformation.
|
| Technology augments individuals and given sufficient
| augmentation, the power of one individual will be larger than the
| power of millions. This is already the case economically and
| politically, and that will soon be the case militarily.
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| I think that may be a key point. People (a large percentage of
| people) can be manipulated at the flick of a switch due to
| advancements in technology and science. Therefore democracy as
| an ideal must of died sometime around 2014
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| When was the last time "the people" were actually in charge?
|
| I think "democracy" died in ancient Greece, along with its
| actual meaning.
|
| The only modern interpretation that is consistent with the
| original meaning is a dictatorship of the proletariat.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| Any "dictatorship of the proletariat" ended up as oligarchy
| very quickly.
| ulchar wrote:
| that's some mind you have
|
| seeing into the future like that
| fauntle wrote:
| Finally, someone who sees the writing on the wall and isn't
| afraid to positive thinking themselves out of it.
| seydor wrote:
| A lot of awful things happen because some people think they can
| fix "the world". We can fix ourselves one by one, not all at
| once.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| The world on big measures is going better than it has. I am
| constantly annoyed there are too many in power slowing process to
| actually do better. If we all wanted it to be better to avoid
| preventable deaths and disability we could make progress a lot
| faster than we do.
| chasing wrote:
| But what about that ragebait headline I read the other day?
| Clearly the entire system must be burnt to the ground.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >It is wrong to think these three statements contradict each
| other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better
| world is possible.
|
| I'll disagree with all of that. Awful, better, and improving are
| all measured differently, however these observations will push,
| pull, and merge with other observations. Quality of life is not
| so clean that we can dismiss any part of it as trivial.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| This is what shielded first world upper class tell themselves to
| not feel guilty, and at the same time to make sure that no actual
| change threatening the status quo that keeps them well fed
| happens too fast.
|
| You never hear someone struggling to pay rent or to buy groceries
| tell you "God bless we have it so much better than 150 years
| ago". Guess why?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| People who believe that the world is doomed no matter what
| don't spend any effort making the world better.
|
| People who believe the world is great as it is don't spend any
| effort making the world better.
|
| Only people who believe that the world should be better, AND
| that it is possible to make it better expend effort to make it
| better.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > Only people who believe that the world should be better,
| AND that it is possible to make it better expend effort to
| make it better.
|
| I agree, but saying the world is much better than in the past
| while it still has all the same basic problems (wars, hunger,
| preventable diseases, poverty, exploitation, etc) sounds to
| me just like privileged people patting themselves in the
| back. In the meantime, children die under bombs and starving.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It sounds like you read a different article than I did. The
| first line of the article: "The world is awful". Does that
| sound like people patting themselves on the back?
| trgn wrote:
| tangential to your point, and this seems trite, but the
| hippies were right after all. People need to imagine again.
| The ability to see a thing, in your minds eye, from all
| angles, without it having to be fully formed, without it
| having to be realized. Once you can imagine again, the future
| looks bright.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Pay close attention to the guardrails of imagination.
|
| If you imagine too hard, you'll get push back in the form
| of, "every time we've tried something different, it's been
| a disaster." Beyond not having an imagination, there are
| those out there that seek to actively quell imagination.
| It's literally beyond their reality.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| But there has been significant change in the status quo in the
| last 150 years...
|
| Having electricity in ones house wasnt even common until the
| 1890s. Racism was common, if not the default.
| kamma wrote:
| 100% of children would die. The world was awful, is awful and
| continue to be awful. We bring sentient beings to life to only
| subject them to the inevitable death.
| pestaa wrote:
| No, not all children die while being a child.
|
| Antinatalism (the philosophy that having kids is immoral) has
| nothing to do with life expectancy.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| What a silly thought. I'll take my 40? 60? 80? 100? years of
| life over an eternity of nothingness any day of the week,
| thanks.
|
| The world sucks? Maybe so. It also contains food, love, music,
| children, laughter, grandparents, trees, cats, and just fuckin'
| _pathos_ , man.
|
| Try not to waste it!
| archon1410 wrote:
| You'll have an eternity of nothingness regardless of how many
| years of life you get. Perhaps you don't want _only_ an
| eternity of nothingness.
|
| As for the pathos, I've a hard time believing it compensates
| for even a billionth of say, the suffering of an abused
| child. There's no doubt that it would have better
| (impersonally, as Derek Parfit used that word) if the world
| didn't exist. But now that you're here, might as well enjoy
| it, but perpetuating it doesn't seem wise.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| > no doubt that it would have been better if the world
| didn't exist
|
| I _strongly_ doubt this, for what little that 's worth.
|
| Better by what metric? Better for _whom_?
| davidsawyer wrote:
| Super helpful, have a great day
| lapcat wrote:
| From my perspective, global warming is the overriding problem,
| because time is running out to stop it. Maybe time has already
| run out, and it's too late to prevent the terrible consequences.
|
| In terms of other social problems, the world has gotten better in
| many respects, and it could continue to get better over time...
| given unlimited time. I'm just not sure that we have unlimited
| time. Wrecking our own ecosystem makes it very difficult to make
| progress on anything else, and the consequences of wrecking our
| ecosystem will only aggravate our other problems. That's why I'm
| overall pessimistic.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > time has already run out, and it's too late to prevent the
| terrible consequences.
|
| Climate change is not a binary. We can choose how many terrible
| consequences it will have. It'll never be too late to prevent
| some terrible consequences.
| tovej wrote:
| By definition, there's a deadline for preventing something
| from happening. We're already in an extinction cycle,
| extinctions are happening at a rate of 100 to 1000 times the
| natural rate.
|
| And as for absolutes, total extinction of large mammals comes
| to mind as a consequence after which humanity can't really do
| anything.
| feoren wrote:
| I think the possible outcomes of climate change (especially
| if we continue on our current trend) are unthinkably
| catastrophic, at worst including the potential deaths of a
| significant percentage of humanity. But there's still an
| _enormous_ gap between that and "total extinction of large
| mammals". I don't think that's anywhere near a realistic
| consequence of climate change.
| nradov wrote:
| There is no conceivable future in which white-tailed deer
| become extinct in the next few centuries. We will probably
| lose some of the less resilient species, though.
| moffkalast wrote:
| With that kind of tomorrowist mindset it'll be too late. We
| need to make changes and we need to make them yesterday.
| feoren wrote:
| Saying "it's not too late to do _something_ " is more
| likely to effect change than saying "it's too late, climate
| change already happened, we're all fucked, good bye." I
| think you agree with GP here.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I wrote "we can choose how many terrible consequences we'll
| have". Do you think that I would choose "as many as
| possible"?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Lately it really seems like that's indeed the answer of
| those that we've entrusted to make our decisions for us.
| If it's never too late, then we never have to stop making
| profit from ecosystem destruction.
| lapcat wrote:
| It's not a continuum either. There are tipping points: think
| of the ice sheets all melting, the sea levels rising to the
| point where the coasts of continents are swamped. Moreover,
| continually adding energy to the system makes it more
| chaotic, engendering abrupt and unpredictable shifts. We
| can't necessarily "choose" the consequences in some kind of
| orderly manner, as if from a menu.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| We also have options that are unpopular/seem bad right now
| but may not in the future, like solar geoengineering via
| releasing specific compounds into the atmospheric.
|
| Something like that could also likely be achieved, or at
| least put into motion, by a single desperate nation.
| lapcat wrote:
| Was this supposed to make me feel better? The options
| "seem bad" in the same way that volcanic eruptions seem
| bad; i.e., they are actually bad.
|
| A single deperate nation could also put into motion a
| nuclear war.
| Ringz wrote:
| When one looks at the history of human interventions in
| ecosystems, one cannot be optimistic. Whether it's about
| defending against invasive species or restoring
| ecosystems to their "original state," our limited
| understanding of complex ecosystems inevitably leads to
| interventions with negative side effects.
| basil-rash wrote:
| > rising to the point where the coasts of continents are
| swamped
|
| Then it's not a coast, it's underwater. The coast has
| moved. That's fine, they always do. People will need to
| move to accommodate that. That's also fine, they always do.
|
| Also worth noting the sea level is actually falling
| relative to land level in many areas, especially towards
| the poles. What we're most likely to see is mass migration
| into previously frozen/underwater areas towards the poles.
| lapcat wrote:
| > The coast has moved. That's fine, they always do.
|
| Define "always", relative to, say, recorded human
| history.
|
| > People will need to move to accommodate that. That's
| also fine, they always do.
|
| Oh yeah, no problem. Please tell the billion or so people
| who live in coastal areas that it's totally fine.
|
| > What we're most likely to see is mass migration into
| previously frozen/underwater areas towards the poles.
|
| Because the land and infrastructure there is surely
| fantastic. I suppose those people don't need, you know,
| food or water, for example? But ignoring the geological
| and ecological problems for the moment, consider the
| _political_ problems. We 're already driving ourselves
| crazy over a relatively small amount of immigration, and
| you're saying it's fine that a billion or two people are
| going to move--or at least _try_ to move--into different
| countries? I 'm guessing they won't be welcomed with open
| arms.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Global warming is a result of the set point of the system
| going up more than cumulative addition of energy.
|
| The sun absolutely blasts the planet with energy and the
| planet radiates away most of it. Global warming is shifting
| the amount of energy in the system when those things are in
| balance.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| When humanity is still here in 2124 I wonder if there will be a
| Church of Climate Change that still prophesies the inevitable
| doomsday.
| acuozzo wrote:
| Define "still here".
|
| If the population goes through a Toba-esque bottleneck due to
| climate-change-imposed breadbasket failures and there's no
| free energy (oil) left to bootstrap the world back to
| complexity similar to today, then is that "still here"?
|
| Does "A Canticle For Leibowitz" qualify as "still here"?
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Arguments like these do a lot to make so many people roll
| their eyes at the real dangers of climate change that
| exist. There isn't a bit of concrete evidence nor serious
| predictions (not even by the IPCC) that claim climate
| change will be so bad in the next cnetury as to create a
| Toba type die-off (which by the way was, if it even
| affected humanity that severely since this is still heavily
| debated, caused by massive global cooling instead of
| warming). Get a grip on the real risks and work from there.
| Why rabidly lean towards an apocalyptic stance except out
| of a morbid fetishism that many humans have always had to
| end of the world predictions?
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Have you considered reading the Christian eschatology
| Wikipedia page? It's easier to go to the source than
| reinventing it, you can recycle the Latin phrases too -
| win-win.
| lapcat wrote:
| > When humanity is still here in 2124
|
| That's an extremely low bar. Especially when the submission
| title is talking about the world being "much better".
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The inability to solve global warming is itself the result of a
| small number of wealthy and powerful groups having outsized
| influence _and_ these groups operating in a fashion so short
| sighted that they cannot sacrifice their interests to solve the
| problem.
| nradov wrote:
| The inability to solve global warming is itself the result of
| billions of poor and middle-class people wanting to consume
| more energy (sometimes indirectly) in order to improve their
| quality of life. All else being equal, most regular people
| worldwide would prefer to live in a large private house
| filled with high-quality manufactured goods, eat a lot of
| meat, and drive a large comfortable private car. You can
| argue that this is irrational or unhealthy or that no one
| really needs so much stuff, but good luck convincing people
| that they should vote to voluntarily reduce their standard of
| living in furtherance of somewhat nebulous global goals.
| mistermann wrote:
| It's also the result of large numbers of people continuing to
| support an illusory political system that sustains this
| status quo.
|
| As I see it, the wealthy play a non trivial role in the
| marketing of the "superiority" of this system, and rare is
| the person who can seriously consider whether it may(!)
| objectively be one of the primary root causes, despite the
| role it plays in setting rules, distributing "information",
| etc.
| loughnane wrote:
| Demagogues on the right, left, and along every axis make a living
| by shining a light on one of these and leaving others in
| darkness. We buy it because it's easy to pick a side when you're
| only looking at one angle, and easy feels better.
|
| The people who can see that we've got room for improvement
| without poo-pooing the gains that we've made are the best sort of
| people. Sadly that's the center and the center has a hard time
| keeping hold of most people's minds.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| I would argue that the center has a hard time keeping hold of
| the _loudest_ people 's minds. Most people are closer to the
| center then social media would have you believe.
| tovej wrote:
| Our World in Data is a thinktank touting the same old
| progressivist agenda that's keeping us from solving climate
| change through degrowth.
|
| Case in point, they've released a blog post saying that carbon
| dioxide pollution is beginning to decouple from GDP growth, which
| is only weakly happening in a handful of countries with lots of
| alternative energy sources, and this is only because they haven't
| accounted all pollution due to consumption.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Solving the Malaria and vitamin A deficiency is noble, I suppose,
| but only addresses the underlying condition of death.
|
| O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of
| this death?
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Clearly, a world where thousands of tragedies happen every
| single day is awful.
|
| Here I will take the heartless position and say that it is not
| clear to me that this statement is true. I certainly agree that
| it's a tragedy for the people involved. But if 4.4% of children
| dying before age 15 means that the world is an awful place, at
| what point would that stop being true? 2.2%? 1E-10%? I don't
| think the world is an awful place, I think it's a good place,
| getting better in some ways, with a long way to go in many
| others.
| floodle wrote:
| I agree, the statement is just poorly written. A qualifier like
| "awful" is only ever in relation to something else.
|
| Statement 3 (the world can be much better) is essentially a
| better formulation. 4.4% is awful in relation to 0.47%, which
| is possible.
| mistermann wrote:
| Consider how the western world reacted when the harsh version
| of Mother Nature visited their lands temporarily during
| COVID...a few percentages sure seemed to be a big deal then.
| Luckily now that things are back to normal and people are
| thinking "rationally", we can once again see that it is not.
| bttrfl wrote:
| It is bad because I have a loan. It was worse because I had no
| money. It can be better because I could repay the loans. ... It
| is going to be a disaster but let my grandchildren worry about
| it.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2023)
| hmmmcurious1 wrote:
| I wonder how my children will live in this much better world
| where the climate is collapsing, a global war is looming, the
| spectre of unemployment due to automation is everywhere,
| surveillance will soon be unescapable with every person having a
| personal llm agent checking them, inequality soaring and so on.
| Eh who cares, my genes tell me they must move forward so uhh
| sucks for my kids I guess
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Your ancestors lived during the great depression, both world
| wars, the middle ages, et cetera. Surely many of them must have
| been pessimistic about the future, yet they all had kids...
| labrador wrote:
| "Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much,
| much better"
|
| - Laurie Anderson, "Language Is a Virus from Outer Space"
| whoisterencelee wrote:
| Young people are more optimistic than older people, but they
| often lose their optimism as they grow up. They face more
| problems and challenges in the world, and they become more
| cynical and pessimistic. This is a tragedy, because we need
| optimistic people to make positive changes in the world. That is
| why we recommend reading more from very young people who are
| making a difference in the world. They are the voice of the new
| generation, and they have a lot to teach us about optimism and
| hope. If you are curious to learn more,check out this link where
| we did a visual analyze of some of their inspiring stories.
| https://twitter.com/sustaincia/status/1657354485877059584?t=...
| anon115 wrote:
| eliminate all corrupted beuaro rats, kings, specific war
| starters, lethal extremists, with the protocol being a well
| rounded thought out basis. a nuke button not for them to use but
| to wipe these types off the map....
| archon1410 wrote:
| > lethal extremists
|
| > wipe these types off the map
|
| yeah... I agree with some of the sentiment but some self
| -awareness is also good. perhaps we should learn to love the
| lethal extremist inside us.
| yhavr wrote:
| The world is not awful. The world just is.
|
| It's just humans create environment they don't understand and
| can't handle, and it takes them a lot of time and effort to even
| somehow organise it on a small piece of a land. And then it
| ruins, and then they construct it again, and cetera.
| mplewis wrote:
| I mean, if you're rejecting that humans assign values to things
| around them, then nothing is anything.
| xvedejas wrote:
| the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres
| actually zero difference between good & bad things. you
| imbecile. you fucking moron"
| philshem wrote:
| Fun fact: Our World in Data is a YC funded non-profit
|
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/our-world-in-data
| partiallypro wrote:
| When people focus on the positives, they aren't doing so to
| negate the negatives. They are doing so because many people are
| just factually wrong about things, like saying life was better in
| the 50s or something, which is just objectively false. One of the
| best ways to strive forward is optimism of the future and
| optimism about how far we've come; looking and longing for the
| past is not a great way to move forward or solve problems. That's
| one thing I didn't care about the opening statement. Sort of
| missed that point.
| wddkcs wrote:
| 'Better life' or 'worse life' is always subjective, there is no
| way to objectively quantify what makes one life 'better' than
| another. You could list every objective measure imaginable
| (life expectancy, education, access to opportunity, etc.) and
| you would not be close to capturing or defining 'a better
| life'. Human satisfaction is largely a felt quality, an emotion
| that transcends data points.
|
| Optimism is currently being used to fuel false political
| narratives. Any article on the topic can't help but feel
| political given the circumstances. Not just left vs. right, but
| capitalism vs. socialism, rich vs. poor, majority vs. minority.
| 'Things are better now then they ever have been' is an argument
| used in all those arenas. It's not am objective argument in any
| of them, it's a rhetorical device that advocates for the status
| quo.
|
| We shouldn't be optimistic or pessimistic about the future, we
| should be both.
| mudlus wrote:
| Every point is a growth point, every point was a growth point.
| titzer wrote:
| The only optimists these days are humanists. Environmentalists
| generally think the planet is kind of screwed.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-06 23:00 UTC)