The death rate for children has dropped dramatically • Hacker News Board

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#31

Post by andrepd » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 9:32 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #29

krageon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>better housing technology

Almost everywhere throughout the developed world the ratio "house prices"/"wages" is skyrocketing. Young people are increasingly forming a precariat with fewer and fewer of them being able to own a home and constitute a family. "Better housing technology" what does this even mean? Solar panels on the roof? Well first you need to own a roof to put panels in.

>better food technology

Obesity is increasing. In most places junk food is cheaper per calorie than healthy food (to say nothing of aggressive marketing of the former). Again, what does this "better food technology" refer to?

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#32

Post by rocqua » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 9:43 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #16

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.

Honestly - don’t care. The internet makes me able to see endless tragedies big and small 24/7. I help my family, friends, and community and pay it forwards. I sleep like a baby.

I am not talking about tragedies like the war in Ukraine. I'm talking about tragedies like leaded gasoline, PFAS, global warming, air pollution in cities. Things that affect everyone, but slowly enough that we barely notice.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#33

Post by krageon » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 9:49 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #27

krageon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 workin…

What I said was that the provided solutions are both beaten to death and meaningless, and that I would like a solution that did have the potential for impact. What I did not say is to do nothing, so you are not responding to me but rather a fictional person that does not exist. I think we call that a strawman.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#34

Post by formerly_proven » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 10:14 AM UTC

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.

Look at basically any metric over the last 100 years and there will be an astonishing amount of improvement

- Extreme poverty

- Literacy

- Life expectancy

- Access to medicine

- #People living in democracies

- Access to clean water

- Access to food

- General standard of living

- Air quality

- ...

Meanwhile some people think (and others trying to make it look like) we're living in desperate times and are worse off than 50 years ago.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#35

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 10:57 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #11

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming everything is cause for alarm is defecting against the ability to communicate about important things because it means alarms no longer work. Journalists have been crying wolf 24/7/365 on every available bit of bandwidth for decades now and it's time to start treating them appropriately.

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.

> You can ignore the news for years and live care-free without psychological consequences.

Yeah, the problem is that your children's children will be living with the consequences of 3 °C global warming or worse, while both of us will probably be dead for long at that time. Humans psychologically aren't wired to deal with long-term threats, our brains can't process them and their impact nowhere near as well as short-term threats.

Just look at the Ukraine crisis: People raised the bells already in 2014, and no one listened to them. Only when tanks rolled up on Kyiv, the West finally got its collective arse up and started actually delivering serious ammo towards the Ukrainians.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#36

Post by red_trumpet » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 11:04 AM UTC

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

> 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

Could you elaborate on that? What happened to teenage pregnancy after the 1960s (I sounds like the numbers are going up/not going down anymore?), and what did disrupt that trend?

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#37

Post by mensetmanusman » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 11:40 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #11

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming everything is cause for alarm is defecting against the ability to communicate about important things because it means alarms no longer work. Journalists have been crying wolf 24/7/365 on every available bit of bandwidth for decades now and it's time to start treating them appropriately.

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.

That is why survey after survey shows that those who consume such media the most are the most harmed by these messages.

It’s quite sad when you think about it, because those who have a desire to learn more are then taken advantage of until they cower in fear.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#38

Post by rayiner » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 12:57 PM UTC

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.

The experts are living in first world countries and their expectations are pegged to continual improvement in quality of life.

When my dad was growing up in Bangladesh, one out of four kids died before age 5. He nonetheless remembers a happy childhood in his village. Today the childhood mortality rate is under 1 in 30 (about where the US was when he was growing up, but three times higher than the US is today).

Experts say climate change will cost Bangladesh double digit fractions of its GDP by the end of the century (which will still be much higher than today). Are we going to go back to a quarter of kids dying before five? Do the folks in the US not having kids because they worry about climate change think the US is going to get anywhere near what was common around the world a generation ago?

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#39

Post by helloworld11 » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 12:59 PM UTC

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.

Please do name these tragedies and their unfolding consequences, somehow majorly different from the other, previous unfolding tragedies that have been predicted for many, many decades by all sorts of people.

Re: The death rate for children has dropped dramatically

#40

Post by DoughnutHole » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 1:00 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #34

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.

Look at basically any metric over the last 100 years and there will be an astonishing amount of improvement - Extreme poverty - Literacy - Life expectancy - Access to medicine - #People living in democracies - Access to clean water - Access to food - General standard of living - Air quality - ... Meanwhile some people think (and others trying to make it look like) we're living in desperate times and are worse off tha…

It's very clear that the quality of life for the average human is better than it has been at any other time in history, and that we've been on the upward trend for a long, long time.

The mistake is looking at that historical trend and falling for a whig history belief that this trend is the unstoppable march of history and things will always get better, when it's very possible that we are the generation that is approaching the peak.

These gains have to be fought for and protected. The principle issue is that this past century's gains have been built on borrowed time - namely on limited resources that sow the seeds of global environmental catastrophe with every extracted Joule that allows for the next temporary marginal gain in quality of life.

Things are better now than they've ever been. But if someone sticks their head in the ground and ignores the problems that are already starting to manifest they might be in for a rude awakening.