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How Bad Are Things? (2015)

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Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#81

Post by ehvatum »

overthemoon wrote: post #23
qntty wrote: post #16

> This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, or “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” One of these is not like the other. You can have it good by being white and still have real problems.

You're right. I think it's unremarkable to say: People who are not straight and/or white tend to have worse outcomes than people who are straight and/or white. -- and -- Straight white people can have hard, miserable lives. His specific anger is at the notion that members of minority groups suffer THEREFORE members of majority groups do not suffer. But as you said, you can still have it better than people in a minori…

Send these miserable, privileged people to Africa to dig latrines for a year. They'll be a lot happier when they return.

Deprivation is a necessary dimension of human experience. I was looking at setting up one-month trips for snowflakes through Canadian muskeg guided by special forces veterans, but it turns out that only the government can legally form a meeting of minds sufficient to conclude a contract where one party agrees to what amounts to boot camp.

Empathizing with people whose only problem is that their experience does not include overcoming adversity is a challenge that I think is best met with tough love. More of the same clearly is not going to do any good.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#82

Post by rofo1 »

> This is also why I am wary whenever people start boasting

> about how much better we’re doing than back in the bad old

> days. That precise statement seems to in fact be true. But

> people have a bad tendency to follow it up with “And so

> now most people have it pretty good”. I don’t think we

> have any idea how many people do or don’t have it pretty good.

We do have it good. Would you rather be middle class today or a king in 18th century?

We have it amazingly good. The fact that we can't see this ("we" as in society) tells me that our appetites are impossible to satisfy.

At least 90% of all problems I've seen between people are unnecessary and result mostly of lack of compassion and selfishness.

There are problems that are truly unsolvable and tragic - where death or significant health issues are involved - but other than that, people create problems themselves either by being selfish or being the victim of someone else's selfishness.

What would it take to say "I am satisfied with what I have; with the friend near me; with the family near me; with the material possessions that I have; with the values that I own; and I don't need anything else" ?

Everything else being finite, why would our appetites be infinite?

I know some rich people - they are unbelievably unhappy people. You probably can't tell due to their lavish lifestyle, but if you are close to them - you'd know. And they have it all for god knows how many generations henceforth. Really amazing, once you think about it.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#83

Post by m463 »

drngdds wrote: post #51

It's frustrating that the author acknowledges that most bad things are probably heavily correlated, but just soldiers on with his point as though they're independent random variables. Poverty in particular is heavily correlated with, well, most bad things that can happen to a person.

I know someone who was abused as a child, and was treated for drug addiction. When he went to drug rehab, every single person he talked to had been abused as a child.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#84

Post by DisruptiveDave »

bilbo0s wrote: post #78
DisruptiveDave wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pragmatic in execution. Taking active steps to understand and manage the way your mind works, deal with reality without bias or judgment, and relieve yourself of attachments and desires that cause suffering is about as pragmatic as you can get.

I gotta agree with HN User "gorio" on this one. Your initial explanation, and your clarification are a bit closer to romanticism, (or perhaps idealism?), than pragmatism. Pragmatism is relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters. (That's a dictionary definition.) But yeah, in war for example, you are very much not thinking about taking active steps to ma…

> dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.

That's the definition. What I outlined - granted, without the specific action steps - is sensible and realistic. And it distinctly is not about happiness. Romantic would be "just be happy." Would you consider behavioral therapy romantic?

Edit: I'm really hoping you guys aren't saying that anything involving a person managing their mind/emotions is romantic and impractical.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#85

Post by bilbo0s »

drngdds wrote: post #51

It's frustrating that the author acknowledges that most bad things are probably heavily correlated, but just soldiers on with his point as though they're independent random variables. Poverty in particular is heavily correlated with, well, most bad things that can happen to a person.

Obviously I wouldn't know for sure since I'm not the author. That said, I think the author is saying that bad things can happen to a person, even if the heavily correlated thing has not happened to a person?

Again, just taking a stab at what the author meant. Not claiming that I know or anything.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#86

Post by threwawasy1228 »

reroute1 wrote: post #72
ryanbrunner wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When talking about groups, that makes sense. I think one of the points that the author is making is that it doesn't make sense to apply this to individuals within this group. "White males are privileged" is a reasonable statement to make with plenty of evidence to support it. "You have it better than me because you're a white male" doesn't, because there's a significant amount of overlap in the bell curves of "better…

'"White males are privileged" is a reasonable statement to make with plenty of evidence to support it.' Is it though? I think you're going to need to be a lot more specific than that to make a reasonable statement. You can try to support your original statement, but that's so vague it could mean whatever you want.

I saw a recent statistic on the talent.works blog that might be interesting to this discussion. They had a sample size of around 6-10k and found that women had a much higher interview rate than men, at all levels of experience, and across multiple categories of industry. Here is the graphic related to their article. [0]

But on that same dataset it was found that Asians and Whites get more disproportionately more job offers than Black and Hispanic applicants in America. So while things might be shifting or evening out for some characteristics, like gender, in others they are still going strong.

[0] https://i1.wp.com/talent.works/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/re...

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#87

Post by bilbo0s »

DisruptiveDave wrote: post #84
bilbo0s wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta agree with HN User "gorio" on this one. Your initial explanation, and your clarification are a bit closer to romanticism, (or perhaps idealism?), than pragmatism. Pragmatism is relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters. (That's a dictionary definition.) But yeah, in war for example, you are very much not thinking about taking active steps to ma…

> dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations. That's the definition. What I outlined - granted, without the specific action steps - is sensible and realistic. And it distinctly is not about happiness. Romantic would be "just be happy." Would you consider behavioral therapy romantic? Edit: I'm really hoping you guys aren't saying that anyth…

Well, for my part, I kind of fell on the side of your posts representing more "idealism" than anything else. But, yes, I think "romanticism" works as well. Since romanticism is marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized. Romanticism is not all about being happy. There are romantic heroes in comedies as well as tragedies. The history of literature for instance is replete with many examples of both. Your idea is to make the heroic effort to fix one's mind. Which can easily become a tragedy.

I think pragmatism fits least because of your clarification. Managing one's mind, or ridding oneself of desire, and especially dealing with reality without bias or judgement, are just not terribly realistic in nature. We should certainly strive to deal with reality without bias or judgement for instance, but, I mean, we obviously don't do that in practice. None of us do. Despite the protestations of the number among us who would claim to be completely non-judgemental. Especially not when we find ourselves at a pragmatic extreme. In combat for instance, there is a whole lot of bias and judgement because people start to become almost too pragmatic.

But we can just agree to disagree. No worries man. Just wanted to explain my thinking.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#88

Post by positivejam »

apo wrote: post #67
nradov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Divorce is less common among affluent couples.

Seems plausible - got a reference?

I had also heard that. This was the first source I found, which paints a slightly more complicated picture, but does seem to indicate that divorce is less common among the affluent.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divor...

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#89

Post by AQuantized »

throwayEngineer wrote: post #12

What should humanity do? The big hitters are Drug addiction and Chronic Pain. I don't have a solution for drug addiction, but I can't blame our generation for not finding a solution. No generation has, and given caffeine addiction, it's extremely hard for others to help with. Chronic Pain needs to end. Between Doctors of Physical Therapy and medications, there are little reason for people to be experiencing chronic p…

Decriminalization of all drugs. Almost all evidence from history and practical implementation points to it massively reducing the many negative impacts of criminalized drug addiction. Sadly, the influence of the war on drugs continues to kill and cause suffering to many thousands.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#90

Post by DisruptiveDave »

bilbo0s wrote: post #78
DisruptiveDave wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pragmatic in execution. Taking active steps to understand and manage the way your mind works, deal with reality without bias or judgment, and relieve yourself of attachments and desires that cause suffering is about as pragmatic as you can get.

I gotta agree with HN User "gorio" on this one. Your initial explanation, and your clarification are a bit closer to romanticism, (or perhaps idealism?), than pragmatism. Pragmatism is relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters. (That's a dictionary definition.) But yeah, in war for example, you are very much not thinking about taking active steps to ma…

Couldn't reply to your most recent reply so I'm doing it here:

> Managing one's mind, or ridding oneself of desire, and especially dealing with reality without bias or judgement, are just not terribly realistic in nature. We should certainly strive to deal with reality without bias or judgement for instance, but, I mean, we obviously don't do that in practice.

From that point of view, I get how you're looking at this. You're certainly not wrong. I'm likely letting my own bias color my thoughts here because I practice this more aggressively (and actively) than most. So I've seen how realistic it can be. But generally speaking it's not very realistic, you're right.

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