i'm nearly 70 years old. believe me, things have generally got better, except possibly for the quality of fish & chip shops.
Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
141–150 of 835 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#142Beyond the OP's points, some of which can be seen across history and aren't just a "now" problem,
I feel that aesthetics have declined massively just these past 15 years. I remember the early web, and then the era of blogs and personal websites, the y2k and Frutiger Aero design styles I could see in ads on TV, on many websites, in many of the arts, etc.
Nowadays, you can't find this except in individuals' work
(e.g. those scattered across the web)
Every company's site is the same: a header image or a carousel, big sans serif text saying absolutely nothing of substance, no form nor function in their presentation. Both native software, web apps and smartphone's apps are converging to a braindead flat/material design design (and if you complain, UX people throw out arguments of accesibility (which are completely irrelevant to what UI style you choose to use), and many say that skeuomorphism is ugly (???), when in reality their UI choices are atrocious, reducing functionality by taking away options and even going as far as removing borders around most things, making it harder to know what is clickable. I've seen my parents and grandparents, neighbors and even people my age struggle with these "easy" interfaces)
I genuinely believe the effects of these design choices around everything in our lives are detrimental to our mental wellbeing, and thus I try to surround myself with 19th century furniture, and I use Windows XP for any non-internet related task. I prefer forums and personal sites in my browsing, and regularly use wiby.me and marginalia.nu's search functionality. I only play old games and indie games too. I know it's just a futile attempt to resist the passage of time, but I can't help it. I try to make things in this vein and I know that it's just a small drop in the ocean but I still do it.
There's this article from the Guardian in a similar vein https://theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jun/19/grey
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#143The economy, social behavior, investing and most aspects of human society are “reflexive”.
People modulate their behavior and outlook based on what they think other people think.
Going even deeper, people absorb way more from other people than they first let on or realize. Over time, their own thoughts adapt to whatever’s in their RAM and they believe they truly believe what their brain produced. This leads them to have a greater conviction in their beliefs which leads to actions that further propagate that belief.
There have been several events in the last few years that have altered people’s internal sense of security and hope. With social media, people are far more exposed to the sentiment of other peers as opposed to a leader (or book) who would otherwise be responsible for reframing traumatic events.
The decision makers aren’t immune to these influences. So on multiple levels, society is regressing towards the mean.
Furthermore, the mean is also decreasing due to real reflexive effects in the economy and people’s sense of well being.
So a greater mass of people are content with not being as good as they were before.
Society will have to get fairly deep into the abyss before it realizes it hates being there and an exceptional leader will have to show everyone a path out of it.
People won’t realize that they caused the situation in the first place but only be focused on first order effects such as how bad they feel or how much money they have.
The sentiment that things are futile seems to have already captured you. The only thing you can do now is to realize the first thing you need to do is insulate yourself from being bludgeoned into mediocrity by all the noise around you if you want to effect any material change.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#144You should read Factfulness by Hans Rosling.
Do you mind giving us a brief bit why it relates, and why it'd help?
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I have something to learn, but what load-bearing social foundation would public pajama-wearing endanger?
Respect for other people, general social norms, polite behavior, personal dignity, and in general just a respect for one's appearance and a desire to make "civilization" aesthetically appealing. People seem to enjoy living in beautiful buildings with green parks nearby, without pollution or noise, and yet somehow think dressing like a slob or putting zero effort into one's appearance is unimportant. To be honest, if…
> I'll also add that in many countries outside of America, it is just the default to care about your appearance when in public.
Like forcing women to wear headscarves in Iran.
The reason your argument is not self evidently true is the reason it’s not important FWIW.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#14630-50 years ago, with a single salary you could support a house with a yard, a non-working spouse, multiple kids, and a car. Our society knew how to make that happen once, and we've forgotten. We've had incredible advances in technology and productivity since then, so why can't we have that kind of economic environment now? What's gumming up the works?
One reason is changing geopolitics. USA is not the sole superpower that it was in the 60s. Other countries are also doing a lot better now. A lot of the jobs in manufacturing have been outsourced to China, in service industry to India. This has led to shift of wealth from US to these countries. The days of American exceptionalism are probably ending. It's only going to get tougher from here.
The USA weren't the sole superpower in 1960s.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#147People are gonna people. My main priority is my own mental wellbeing and my sense of inner calm among all the chaos you see. Self care, and self love instead of selfishness.
'Hell is other people' as the saying goes.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#148I think we're on the verge/in the middle of a stagnating/shrinking pie. When we're not growing in population and wealth things get dark as people chase zero-sum short term gains at the expense of others. Distrust runs rampant, people turn to the extraction of their peers vs expansion with their new friends. It will get better. Edit: Think bigger than the extractors!
> I think we're on the verge/in the middle of a stagnating/shrinking pie. When we're not growing in population
If population were to decline, wouldn't that mean each person's piece of the pie is growing? If "piece of pie" is real estate or some other scarce resource that would seem to be the case.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Respect for other people, general social norms, polite behavior, personal dignity, and in general just a respect for one's appearance and a desire to make "civilization" aesthetically appealing. People seem to enjoy living in beautiful buildings with green parks nearby, without pollution or noise, and yet somehow think dressing like a slob or putting zero effort into one's appearance is unimportant. To be honest, if…
> I'll also add that in many countries outside of America, it is just the default to care about your appearance when in public. Like forcing women to wear headscarves in Iran. The reason your argument is not self evidently true is the reason it’s not important FWIW.
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Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#150> People are noisy as fuck and dont seem to give a shit. Seems like every night there's someone with loud as exhaust on "sportish" car ripping around the neihborhood. For months this guy would start up his loud car at 7am and no one care when I complained. > Police seem to not give a shit anymore. I've noticed what seems to be total lawlessness going on in my world. Folks stealing shit. People driving absurdly danger…
None of this is new. I can tell you stories of similar experiences going back into my childhood in the early 80s. I know people who can tell you airline stories from the 60s that are similar.
Much of this is new. Governments have taken much heed to anything that could be construed as having "disparate impact", and are running a reverse broken-windows experiment on the ground. When in the past did we decide we were going to prosecute theft only if the total value was greater than 1k?