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Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
211–220 of 835 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#212Global poverty has decreased by more than half in the last 50 years.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#213Try traveling around. You’ll see that the world outside of your immediate vicinity is actually pretty good. That’s the way I can view the world as positive even when I see the weaknesses/negative aspects of my immediate surroundings.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#214>the water is poison Putting aside the tons of pollution in lakes and oceans, what strikes me the most now is the abject failure and neglect in cities like Jackson, Mississippi and Flint, Michigan. How are people so powerless, governments so weakened, and politicians so detestable that something as basic as clean drinking water in cities is no longer functioning?
It's worth noting that, in a country of 330 million people, you only came up with two examples. Those things are newsworthy because they're outliers.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Broken window theory of dress. Poorly dressed uncaring people attract more of that behavior and the poor attitude bleeds into other interactions.
But how far do you go? Using that approach, people 100 years ago wearing a suit and tie and a hat would probably want to ban what we wear today, on the grounds of broken glass theory. Yet we are (I presume) law abiding citizens here, etc.
It's really not that intellectual or complicated. Just don't dress like a bum in public? Not everything needs a theorem or rigorous, tested, scientifically researched set of rules.
Nobody is asking you to walk around in a 3 piece suit, there is no slippery slope or conspiracy theory here, it's just "dress like you give a shit about the public space and others in it".
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#216> Anyone else have other examples? Elected president who is so crass and generally offensive he wouldn't have gotten close to being elected 50 years ago. Elected president who is showing clear signs of age related cognitive decline (so they say) but continues to occupy the office. Elected presidents with criminal behaviour that is far worse than what previous presidents were impeached or resigned for. Mental illness,…
A European nation casually invading another European nation, something we thought was now unthinkable not too long ago.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you know what the objectively correct attire is and how did you measure it? And if you don’t know what it is then why would you say pyjamas aren’t it? Norms and expectations have varied wildly not just geographically in the present day but over time as well. To the point it was and actually is common to physically harm people.
Just because multiple scales of value exist does not imply that all scales are equal or meaningless entirely.
Right but that’s a non-answer because norms change over time and place and that can only happen if people are allowed to change them over time and place. All you’re saying is that it’s subjective in a clouded way. At best you’re basically being left behind the cultural norm and probably should catch up.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#218Will Durant once expressed his conviction that the world only seems to get worse because as we develop morally and intellectually, we're less tolerant of evil but simultaneously more able to perceive it. In empirical terms things have been getting better for a long time, and probably still are.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
>being a grown-ass adult in pajamas out in public I'm with you about all the other things but people wearing whatever clothes they want to affects you in literally no way shape or form.
Dress how you want in your own house. The public space isn't yours and you don't have a right to dress indecently in the public space. Turns out, some of us want to live in a society that takes itself seriously and gives a shit. Walking around in your Cookie Monster PJs just doesn't cut it. THIS mindset is what I think is the root of all the other listed problems. Somehow freedom has come to mean "I can do whatever I…
Hold on, you're saying Cookie Monster is indecent?
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#220Noisy people are all over the place and 24/7 noise is horrible for my health. The only way I know to escape noise is pay more for a better neighborhood.