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The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

npr.org

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Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#21

Post by asdff »

rocqua wrote: post #15
seibelj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYT is constantly using the words "scary", "terrifying", "afraid", "catastrophe". The sun is still shining and my kids are still playing outside. You can ignore the news for years and live care-free without psychological consequences.

I do believe that generally the world is not okay. We are currently suffering the consequences of many slowly unfolding tragedies that were well warned about by experts. So I imagine there are quite a few tragedies building up now, warned about, but not yet acted uppon.

What can you personally do about it? Like it or not we are on a ship we can't steer. Might as well look inwardly and enjoy yourself, friends, and family most of all.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#22

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

tjr225 wrote: post #8
savant_penguin wrote: post #4

"Yet there's cause for alarm" I find these claims actually dangerous We risk disrupting what has consistently been a downard trend by acting on some arbitrary definition of "cause of alarm". Teenage pregnancy after the 1960's is one example of that

Yeah, NPR has been driving me nuts with this crap. There seem to be 0 news sources available that can’t help but slip some alarmist flavor text in. I can’t listen to it anymore.

> There seem to be 0 news sources

Try https://join1440.com/

You won’t regret it.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#23

Post by tetris11 »

asdff wrote: post #21
rocqua wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do believe that generally the world is not okay. We are currently suffering the consequences of many slowly unfolding tragedies that were well warned about by experts. So I imagine there are quite a few tragedies building up now, warned about, but not yet acted uppon.

What can you personally do about it? Like it or not we are on a ship we can't steer. Might as well look inwardly and enjoy yourself, friends, and family most of all.

You can help out with volunteer work or donations, you can vote instead of in your own interests but tactically to help others, you can undermine oppressive laws with secret acts of kindness. It's amazing what one person can do.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#24

Post by krageon »

tetris11 wrote: post #23
asdff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can you personally do about it? Like it or not we are on a ship we can't steer. Might as well look inwardly and enjoy yourself, friends, and family most of all.

You can help out with volunteer work or donations, you can vote instead of in your own interests but tactically to help others, you can undermine oppressive laws with secret acts of kindness. It's amazing what one person can do.

None of those things will solve the real problem: We're destroying our own biosphere. Our kids are going to live in an objectively shittier world, to say nothing of their children. That's not solvable with random acts of kindness, because cruelty isn't what's killing the planet. It's indifference.

It's not solvable by voting, because the generation you can vote into political power will never suffer the consequences of their own decisions. The timelines are too long. Couple that with the fact that political power is very temporal and political thinking is of necessity fairly short-term and you have to come to the conclusion that no politician will solve this for anyone.

If you have a meaningful way to solve this issue, I'd love to hear it. But pretending there are things we can do to solve it is not going to change anything.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#25

Post by ZeroGravitas »

TaylorPhebillo wrote: post #2

The enormous risk factor from the article is malnutrition. Givewell, an organization which specializes in estimating the cost-effectiveness of forms of charitable giving, suggests treating acute malnutrition could be extremely cost effective, costing a few thousand dollars to save a life. https://blog.givewell.org/2021/11/19/malnutrition-treatment/

I'd imagine that dealing with malnutrition in children maximises quality of life as well as the binary alive/dead distinction.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#26

Post by ZeroGravitas »

krageon wrote: post #24
tetris11 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can help out with volunteer work or donations, you can vote instead of in your own interests but tactically to help others, you can undermine oppressive laws with secret acts of kindness. It's amazing what one person can do.

None of those things will solve the real problem: We're destroying our own biosphere. Our kids are going to live in an objectively shittier world, to say nothing of their children. That's not solvable with random acts of kindness, because cruelty isn't what's killing the planet. It's indifference. It's not solvable by voting, because the generation you can vote into political power will never suffer the consequences…

Voting is not sufficient but it is necessary. Vote for more democracy/transparency/science/education, vote against less.

The general form of the issue (and therefore solutions) is outlined by Olsen's Collective Action Theory.

We're doing this to ourselves, like the prisoner's dilemma and game theory tells us we can rewrite the rules of the game to get better outcomes.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#27

Post by watwut »

krageon wrote: post #24
tetris11 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can help out with volunteer work or donations, you can vote instead of in your own interests but tactically to help others, you can undermine oppressive laws with secret acts of kindness. It's amazing what one person can do.

None of those things will solve the real problem: We're destroying our own biosphere. Our kids are going to live in an objectively shittier world, to say nothing of their children. That's not solvable with random acts of kindness, because cruelty isn't what's killing the planet. It's indifference. It's not solvable by voting, because the generation you can vote into political power will never suffer the consequences…

Your suggestion amounts to "do nothing" which will achieve even less then voting. Practically speaking, people who do think there is issue and are willing to look for solutions or at least talk about the issue have a chance to improve state of things in the long term.

People who gave up, wont ever improve anything. People who insist that nothing should be done, because none if it is perfect enough are actively working against solution.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#28

Post by rocqua »

xvector wrote: post #17
rocqua wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do believe that generally the world is not okay. We are currently suffering the consequences of many slowly unfolding tragedies that were well warned about by experts. So I imagine there are quite a few tragedies building up now, warned about, but not yet acted uppon.

Meh. These "tragedies" are often irrelevant and often the only time you will ever encounter them will be in some news article written by a hand-wringing doomer. Willfully ignoring the news is amazing for mental health. The benefit of cutting the constant stream of doomerism out of one's life cannot be overstated - it's a benefit that far exceeds whatever minimal value to society you could provide by tuning into the n…

Speaking from a European (dutch) perspective

Climate change, PFAS, over-reliance on Russian gas, leaded gasoline, inhumane bureaucracy, discontent with immigrants, lack of technical manual labour, government culture becoming hostile to transparency, nitrogen emmesions exceeding European law.

That is a small list of things that were known to be bad, and warned about for a very long time, but were adressed very late, or not yet. These are all things that affect me directly. They just act slowly.

How many of the things we are being warned about now will be on a similar list in 20 years?

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#29

Post by kortilla »

krageon wrote: post #24
tetris11 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can help out with volunteer work or donations, you can vote instead of in your own interests but tactically to help others, you can undermine oppressive laws with secret acts of kindness. It's amazing what one person can do.

None of those things will solve the real problem: We're destroying our own biosphere. Our kids are going to live in an objectively shittier world, to say nothing of their children. That's not solvable with random acts of kindness, because cruelty isn't what's killing the planet. It's indifference. It's not solvable by voting, because the generation you can vote into political power will never suffer the consequences…

> Our kids are going to live in an objectively shittier world, to say nothing of their children.

This is complete horseshit. They will have better medical technology, better housing technology, better food technology (people ate like shit 50 years ago let alone 100 years ago), etc.

It’s only “objectively shittier” if your objective has nothing to do with human life and is mainly focused on biodiversity.

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