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Life Improvements Since the 1990s

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Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#451

Post by Robotbeat »

thegrimmest wrote: post #434
Robotbeat wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because usually we aren’t in such an extremely tight labor market driven by high federal spending. If you want to argue for indefinite high federal spending to guarantee a tight labor market for decades, then sure, a higher minimum wage might not be necessary. Is that what you’re arguing? Because if a tight labor market is transitory (and minimum wage keeps dropping due to inflation), then businesses won’t be giv…

I'm not arguing for indefinitely high federal spending, but I would make the case that spending money on infrastructure is a much better use of money compared to pretty much anything else the federal government can do with it. I'm arguing that labour shouldn't be specially exempt from markets fluctuating between tight and loose. I'm also arguing that raising the minimum wage hurts the very poorest of us the most, by…

The problem is that in times without a super high labor market, employers are able to maintain a monopsony on labor and therefore suppress wages. This has caused massively increased inequality and wage stagnation. That’s why the minimum wage is good. But using federal spending to maintain a tight labor market can accomplish the same goal.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#452

Post by Pelam »

I love the list and optimism is a breath of fresh air, but climate change is the elephant hiding between the lines. It is linked in many ways to many of those improvements.

It also threatens to wipe away many of those, especially if societies or ecosystems begin to collapse or conflicts increase.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#453

Post by JackPoach »

throwaway-x123 wrote: post #384
JackPoach wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we be measuring at all? Claiming that people have to be more happy over time is a weird proposition for a biologist like me. Not only happiness does not exist (see reification), the idea that it can be 'measured and improved' is silly. Should the next generation of birds be more happy and fulfilled than the previous one? Should the next generation of chimps have stronger lasting relationships? Does it even mak…

As I understand, happiness is free time from necessary work. Quote from book Hunnicutt, Free time: Benjamin Franklin, agreeing that “the happiness of individuals is evidently the ultimate end of political society,” offered his vision of Higher Progress: If every man and woman would work for four hours each day on some- thing useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of li…

Wouldn't it then be easier and more logical to set the goal as 'reduction of work hours from ... to...'?

Personally, I don't believe that working less (or more) makes people happy (unhappy), but my whole point is that defining your future goals in terms of happiness and attempting to measure it is futile by definition.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#454

Post by JackPoach »

PsylentKnight wrote: post #325
JackPoach wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand the concept of reification? If not, see https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/reification#:~:text=Re... . So if you feel happy (or miserable) it means just that - that you feel happy (or miserable). It doesn't mean that happiness or misery actually exist literally.

So by your logic, everything that doesn't literally exist (laws, businesses, emotions, software, governments, money, etc.) are all things that can't be measured or improved?

No, it's not my logic and your conclusion is incorrect. Measurement units don't actually exist (meters, seconds, inches, pounds, liters) - yet that's how we measure things and very successfully.

Abstractions are critical to human thinking in science. But not only reification is very different, you can't measure happiness even if you want to. You'll always have to go 'happiness as defined ...' or resort to people self reporting their feelings. Which is fine - I always ask my kids how they feel. I just understand that not only kids and adults may change how they feel next hour but that those feelings are unreliable. If you have kids of your own, you know how many 'tragedies' they lived through by the age of 6.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#455

Post by JackPoach »

debaserab2 wrote: post #254
JackPoach wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand the concept of reification? If not, see https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/reification#:~:text=Re... . So if you feel happy (or miserable) it means just that - that you feel happy (or miserable). It doesn't mean that happiness or misery actually exist literally.

Doesn't happiness exist in the sense that there is a complex set of chemical combinations happening in your brain emitting the feeling of happiness?

Maybe, maybe not - you'd have to define which complex set of chemical combination is happiness and which isn't. But why? We know a lot about neurochemistry. We know a lot about receptors, neuromodulators and their interactions (serotonin, addiction). As a biologist I don't understand - why would you want even study something that doesn't exist (happiness), when you can study specific parts of neurochemistry that are more practical and may have actual benefits (like reduction of addiction or help with schizophrenia)

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#456

Post by coldtea »

IshKebab wrote: post #344
coldtea wrote: post #302

It's unbelievable how inconsequential most of those are... Unlike other things, if you didn't have them, you wouldn't really think twice about them in the first place, except as very minor inconveniences...

It's not really surprising lots of them are fairly minor given that it is meant to be an exhaustive list, not a list of only significant changes.

Yes, but even the significant changes among them are mostly inconsequential when one compares with what we got e.g. between 1880 and 1960 (electricity and running water at most homes, cinema, radio and television, nuclear energy and weapons, x-rays, lasers, i.p. engines, cars, airplanes, DNA, satellites, rockets, digital computers, and tons more...)

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#457

Post by elproxy »

nwah1 wrote: post #260
anticodon wrote: post #198

Environment: air quality in most places has continued to improve (and considering the growing evidence on the harms of air pollution, this may well be the single most important item on this whole page), forest area has increased , and more rivers are safe to fish in Because almost all the industrial production that pollutes water and air moved to third-world countries, where people suffer from pollution. Same for thr…

He referenced the Environmental Kuznets Curve. This provides a mechanistic understanding of what is happening. It isn't that modern industrial civilization requires a certain amount of pollution per unit of production which can be offloaded. Rather, pollution is largely something that occurs in the production process in locations where desperation for production is so high that they are not willing to put in any pers…

The Environmental Kuznets Curve is problematic though, see for instance: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2020/10/9/response-to-mcafe...

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#458

Post by laserlight »

JackPoach wrote: post #454
PsylentKnight wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by your logic, everything that doesn't literally exist (laws, businesses, emotions, software, governments, money, etc.) are all things that can't be measured or improved?

No, it's not my logic and your conclusion is incorrect. Measurement units don't actually exist (meters, seconds, inches, pounds, liters) - yet that's how we measure things and very successfully. Abstractions are critical to human thinking in science. But not only reification is very different, you can't measure happiness even if you want to. You'll always have to go 'happiness as defined ...' or resort to people self…

> You'll always have to go 'happiness as defined ...'

How is one meter defined?

You claim that happiness cannot be measured, yet in the next sentence you talk about measuring it by self reporting. One unreliable way of measuring doesn't equal to “cannot be measured”.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#459

Post by JackPoach »

laserlight wrote: post #458
JackPoach wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not my logic and your conclusion is incorrect. Measurement units don't actually exist (meters, seconds, inches, pounds, liters) - yet that's how we measure things and very successfully. Abstractions are critical to human thinking in science. But not only reification is very different, you can't measure happiness even if you want to. You'll always have to go 'happiness as defined ...' or resort to people self…

> You'll always have to go 'happiness as defined ...' How is one meter defined? You claim that happiness cannot be measured, yet in the next sentence you talk about measuring it by self reporting. One unreliable way of measuring doesn't equal to “cannot be measured”.

My argument is as follows - happiness can not AND should not be measured.

Now, that doesn't mean that you can't define happiness as you want it and pursue it on an individual level. For instance - walking in the park makes you 'happy' (as self reported feeling). Yoga makes you happy. Meditation makes you happy. Great - go for it.

BUT it's pointless to even attempt to measure 'group happiness' and try to increase it. People make pointless statements and point fingers in on the wrong directions. The article is about technology and I am sick and tired listening to how technology makes people unhappy or happy. Governments are often blamed for policies that make people unhappy. Society is probably blamed the most for people not being happy. It's too materialistic, the goals are wrong, bla-bla-bla.

BTW Here's the exact meter definition - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#460

Post by robbedpeter »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

>The percentage of the global population living in absolute poverty fell from over 80% in 1800 to under 20% by 2015.

This is astonishing.

In the time frame he's focusing on, from the 90s to now, the decrease in absolute poverty and substantial increases in well-being globally are facts that subsume any single technology or widget or innovation.

24% in 1990 down to around 7% today. More people are living better lives than at any point before in history, and this should be celebrated, but hardly seems to be noticed.

The things he points out, however, are crucial pieces of why things have gotten better. We're able to instantly connect to a global pool of information, alerting each other to the swarm of problems facing the world, and we're able to take action.

Charitable donations, political activism, decentralized media, ubiquitous internet access, and a thousand other small things have enabled and inspired people to use powerful networks of people and computers and resources to effectively target and fix huge problems facing billions of people.

Sure, we have real challenges in the misbehavior of big tech companies and the politics of the panopticon, but maybe we can be hopeful that history has a trend toward a more liberal, purposeful, enabling life for all humans that exceeds the mere struggle for survival.

I think of this article as a reminder to appreciate things that are so incredibly important, even if they tend to go unnoticed day to day. Stop and smell the victory of technology over struggle and disease and discomfort and starvation.

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