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The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

ourworldindata.org

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Re: The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

#61

Post by tsimionescu »

Winsaucerer wrote: post #39
chongli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life was much better for those in Europe who survived the black death. They lived longer, healthier lives. They were paid more due to labour shortages. By nearly every measure their lives were better off than those who lived before the plague. That is small comfort to those who suffered and died during the plague. We're in a similar boat. The winners (survivors) of the climate change disaster will be better off. But…

I don't see how they could be better off than us in any of the following dimensions, or the ones you mention, and likely many more: * Health/medical technology and access * Abundance and variety of food * Education * Life expectancy * Quality (in terms of health) of life * Child mortality Looking at life expectancy alone, I'd be surprised if their life expectancy was higher (is this what you had in mind? https://sc.e…

You're missing their point. They're not comparing those who survived the black death to us, but to the people who lived before the black death struck.

Similarly, the people who will survive the coming climate catastrophes may well live better lives than we do today, and thus some future Economist may well claim that it all turned out OK in the end. But that analysis ignores the billions of people whose lives will likely end because of global warming.

Re: The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

#62

Post by philovivero »

tsimionescu wrote: post #54
jillesvangurp wrote: post #20

I'm only 47 years old. I've lost count of the number of things that improved exponentially during my life time. More has happened in the last half century than in all of humanity before that in terms of scientific progress. Perhaps a different way to look at things is that while people are causing no end of trouble for each other, the planet they live on, etc. they also have a knack for just continually figuring out…

> More has happened in the last half century than in all of humanity before that in terms of scientific progress. The vast majority of scientific advances in the last hundred years happened before World War I and right after - most notably, special and general relativity, and quantum mechanics. Computing was discovered right after WWII, as was the transistor. Lisp and FORTRAN are older than 50 years. We landed on the…

> Nothing discovered since the 70s compares to the advances in science and technology made in the first half of the twentieth century.

Not buying that in the slightest.

Reusable rocket boosters? Battery tech? International money movement? Everything in tech from 2000 to present?

Sure, if you just define "everything since the 70's doesn't spark my imagination" then you win this round of nihilism, but the last 50 years have been amazing.

Re: The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

#63

Post by tsimionescu »

yorwba wrote: post #33
chongli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life was much better for those in Europe who survived the black death. They lived longer, healthier lives. They were paid more due to labour shortages. By nearly every measure their lives were better off than those who lived before the plague. That is small comfort to those who suffered and died during the plague. We're in a similar boat. The winners (survivors) of the climate change disaster will be better off. But…

The black death is a bad analogy. At the time, population was at the upper limit that could be sustained with the technology of the time. If a farmer wanted a larger harvest, they would need to farm a larger area, denying its use to others, thus causing them to starve. Conversely, the large number of deaths directly increased the resources available to everyone else. It was a zero-sum game, with one person's loss bei…

100M deaths may make sense if we're ignoring the extreme likelihood of a third world war caused by climate. But given what we know of the history of resource depletions, and the fact that some of countries which will be first affected will be India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, which have minor skirmishes even today and two of which are armed with nuclear weapons, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that such a low number is going to prove anywhere near accurate.

Re: The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

#64

Post by tsimionescu »

Winsaucerer wrote: post #34
29athrowaway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The world has been getting better, and continues to get better." Perhaps the tiny surface of the world you interact with now has more conveniences than before, but that is very distant from a reality where things are getting better. Your perception depends on taking many factors for granted, not acknowledging we depend on multiple concurrent progress traps. If you go to the supermarket and the shelves are empty, i…

> Perhaps the tiny surface of the world you interact with now has more conveniences than before, but that is very distant from a reality where things are getting better. By MANY measures, the world has been getting gradually better for just about everyone: https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit... . When we look at the facts globally, there is a clear and obvious trajectory. > Toxic optimism won…

But we are very visibly NOT doing what needs to be done, particularly in the effort to stop climate change. The world's largest polluter per capita by far is actively opposed to virtually any measures which could stop climate change, and it's using its vast influence to more or less indirectly convince others not to do so. Europeans are also patting their backs for how green they are, while still mostly producing more CO2 per capita than China and India combined.

Re: The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

#65

Post by tsimionescu »

philovivero wrote: post #62
tsimionescu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More has happened in the last half century than in all of humanity before that in terms of scientific progress. The vast majority of scientific advances in the last hundred years happened before World War I and right after - most notably, special and general relativity, and quantum mechanics. Computing was discovered right after WWII, as was the transistor. Lisp and FORTRAN are older than 50 years. We landed on the…

> Nothing discovered since the 70s compares to the advances in science and technology made in the first half of the twentieth century. Not buying that in the slightest. Reusable rocket boosters? Battery tech? International money movement? Everything in tech from 2000 to present? Sure, if you just define "everything since the 70's doesn't spark my imagination" then you win this round of nihilism, but the last 50 years…

None of these technologies fundamentally improve anyone's life, and they are all incremental.

Reusable rocket boosters are nice, but they're not making anyone's life better (they barely even reduce the costs of space flight).

Battery tech is important, but again, it is a minor addition; the improvements so far don't even help with a renewable grid, as they are reliant on a very scarce resource - Lithium.

International money transfer has existed since the 1600s, technology has really only sped things up; if anything, the main advances were legal, not techical; not to mention, there are good arguments to be made that the ease of directly owning factories and dev centers in other countries has been an overall negative for local businesses, replacing global trade and competition with behemoths doing global financing.

And yes, everything in tech from the 2000s onwards is nice, but incremental and not any sort of leap for mankind, outisde of some medical technologies.

And much of this is obvious. In the first half of the twentieth century, we went from steam locomotives to rockets capable of reaching the moon. In the second half, we were able to make some parts of those rockets reusbale. How can you claim with a straight face that the latter is a bigger advancement than the former?

Re: The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

#66

Post by robertlagrant »

imtringued wrote: post #57
revskill wrote: post #42

The world is aweful because the economic and political system is aweful. They're aweful because they're run by aweful people, who should spend time on something else rather than being a bad leader. And they're aweful because of the world is aweful.

Instead of getting cause and effect backwards over and over again maybe one should think that the reverse is true instead? It is so easy to blame politicians because that means you get to blame someone else. What if the economic system is broken to begin with and the only thing you can do is shift the suffering away from your interest group to another interest group? In other words, the economic system itself has cre…

> Not even a centrally planned economy can be the solution

A centrally planned economy has the worst track record in history. It definitely won't be the solution.

Re: The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

#67

Post by birksherty »

It's too selfish for humans to say world is better. Is the world only for humans? Does it belong to us only?

Every other species is in terrible condition than before or they got extinction.

And the better is not going to last. All the progress is because of extreme fossil fuel usage. The effect has started to show, to be honest it's going to get much worse in coming decades.

It's like a person falling from a building says life was never so exiting while going down each floor, even just before hitting the ground.

Re: The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

#68

Post by mongol »

senectus1 wrote: post #5
vitorbaptistaa wrote: post #3

If you enjoyed this post, I highly recommend reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling. He spent his later years trying to educate the public on the realities of the world. This book contains a series of tips on how to understand facts. His TED talks are masterpieces as well.

absolutely agree. Hans Rosling was amazing for presenting data in a visual and easy to digest way. Was very sad when he passed away back in 2017.

Indeed. And additionally, I have often wondered what opinions and impact he would have had during the Covid pandemic

Re: The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

#69

Post by benjaminclark »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #36

Is there a consensus on this organization (givewell.org)? I donate to French organizations I know and see their work directly, but have no experience with international ones such as this one. I would be most interested in ones that provide education capacities to girls but the one from the post concentrates on health related ones (which is of course great as well)

In my corner of the world/philanthropy discussion, I'd consider GiveWell one of the most well-known organizations and with a reputation of high quality, thorough research. In terms of charity evaluators who focus on the impact per dollar spent, I'd have a hard time thinking of anyone comparable.

Regarding what type of programs GiveWell currently recommends, they do evaluate a wide range of types of programs. For instance, here is a page on their website summarizing some of their work on education: https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/ed.... However, with the facts as they exist in the world today, their analysis is that for a given amount of funding, more good can be done with certain specific health interventions.

Re: The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

#70

Post by revskill »

miffy900 wrote: post #49
revskill wrote: post #42

The world is aweful because the economic and political system is aweful. They're aweful because they're run by aweful people, who should spend time on something else rather than being a bad leader. And they're aweful because of the world is aweful.

> The world is aweful because the economic and political system is aweful. They're aweful because they're run by aweful people, who should spend time on something else rather than being a bad leader. And they're aweful because of the world is aweful. Is there a reason you're spelling it that way?

Because when things get better and awesome, this sentence is still true, "aweful" mean both awful and awesome, depends on the context.
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