Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 835 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#411

Post by amelius »

noud wrote: post #7

I think you're way off base. It's called rosy retrospection, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection . As you already mentioned in your comments, you're judging the past disproportionately more positive that the present. If you really want to know if everything is declining, try measure it everyday for the next five years. For example, every day, rate your personal well being, track how (un)happy you are wit…

People are getting less social, probably because of social media.

That's not something you can do away with seeing the past in a more rosy way. Because in the past people had to interact to get through life.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#412

Post by Dalewyn »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #362
cedws wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 21 and I think everything's going to shit as well... is it doomerism or reality? Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?

Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories), and getting more in person interaction. You don’t need to be invested in the finer details of global politics or stories of violence hundreds of miles a way. Disconnect and recharge. Reconnect with people around you and enjoy the world as it exists, not for some representation of all the terrible things on…

>Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories),

300% this.

I heard on several occasions long ago how newspapers aren't worth reading and news programs aren't worth watching. At the time I didn't understand why and thought it was bad advice, young and naive greenhorn that I was: The news is there to inform us! Being informed is a good thing!

Now that I'm approaching my mid 30s and have some wisdom under my belt (still need to accrue more!), I can properly understand and appreciate the value behind that sagely advice to ignore the news.

The news, and more aptly the media at large including social media, isn't about informing us. It's about angering us, about baiting us into feelings of sensationalism. The vast majority of the bullshit we see on the news is negative because negative stories are very effective at tugging at our heart strings. The vast majority of the content on social media is far fetched from reality because reality is fairly mundane.

It's a patent waste of time to be concerned about things that don't concern you or that you can do nothing about (eg: things happening on the other side of the continent or the fucking planet). Turn off all that bullshit, time is finite and there are much better things that time could be spent on.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#413

Post by odo1242 »

andrewprock wrote: post #304
troad wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of this is related to inequality, value of labour detaching from wealth, and the increasing unaffordability of life. Inequality is declining by every measurable metric in the United States. Edit: To answer the folk naysaying with their ten second Google searches, the income inequality rate has declined between 2007 and 2019(1), helped by a strong wage recovery in the late 2010s. The share of wealth held by th…

Over what period of time? Since 1980 there is a clear and dramatic increase in the the concentration of wealth. The pandemic and related problems may have stalled that trend for a time.

(the pandemic has, in fact, made every metric of income/wealth inequality markedly worse)

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#414

Post by talkingtab »

People, humane beings, have grown and prospered in the past because they were able to form and act as communities. We are good, really good at that. If you want a modern example of how effective functional communities can be, you can look at the Ukraine. Or at revolutionary war era Americans. Or hunting mastodons to extinction. As communities we do exceedingly well. If you take away our ability to form and act as communities then we lose this. The internet, which was supposed to be a way to be more effective instead has destroyed our ability to act as communities. Our way of building a common understanding has been destroyed by letting people track us and target us with lies.

Who can trust the internet? No sane person would trust the internet. We have fanaticism on all sides. And yes it I do mean all -your side too. No matter which side you are on, your ability to see what you have in common with others is impaired.

Have you listened to political ads on the internet, tv and radio. They are all of a kind "X is betraying you and has sold his/her/its soul to the devil" So vote for Y. There is nothing in those to build consensus or common understanding. There is everything to outrage us, embitter us, and divide us.

This is the problem.

Tracking ads are a social disease that can destroy our society by preventing us from having a society. And yes it is much more complex, but it is also just that simple.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#416

Post by pjscott »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #266
pjscott wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Or perhaps I picked two top-of-mind examples that other readers would recognize in the name of brevity? Those are not the only examples: https://abcnews.go.com/US/map-ongoing-water-crises-happening... And that list doesn't even include the tragedy of the commons situation that is California. But going back to Jackson, Mississippi, it seems that elected officials refuse to properly fulfill their role in governing. Ie.…

Alright, I'll moderate my argument a bit by acknowledging that I'd have to use both hands to count the number of places that ABC reported as having newsworthy municipal water problems. But that's roughly what I'd expect in a country that's doing pretty darn well at water provision! Elected officials focus on doing what will get them re-elected, and nobody gets re-elected by saying "During my time in office, I made sure the water department replaced their intake filters on the schedule recommended by the manufacturer."

When you consider the political incentives, it's an under-appreciated miracle that politicians in the US serve the public at all and that things shamble along as well as they do.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#417

Post by sirsinsalot »

Things are getting better, broadly over time, but you hear more and more about the wider badness. Stress reduces compassion to others and so you yourself may miss the good in others.

There's a never ending cycle of impending doom broadcast on all channels.

Things _feel_ worse. That doesn't mean they are.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#418

Post by fwungy »

ignoramous wrote: post #245
somethoughts wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just personal but anytime I feel similar to the OP, I watch something by Hans Rosling [1] or Anna Rosling [2]. Although 10 and 5 years old respectively, I feel the general sentiment is still true - that human progress is slow, in the background and might be ebbing and flowing in your specific sub-population. And when compared to the present, media narrative driven present its hard to see the improvements happ…

Reminds me of this tweet by Derek Thompson (writer at The Atlantic ): In 2022, we: - Reversed organ death in pigs - Made the first embryo from stem cells - Made a pan-influenza vaccine - Saw the beginning of time - Got best-ever results from cancer & obesity therapy trials - Maybe cracked the case of multiple sclerosis From: https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1600864770751860737 ( https://archive.is/pi95L )

A bunch of claims that cannot be easily verified and may never pay off even if they are true and viable.

Why can't we do something about the genocide of young black men that is being committed by young black men, for example?

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#419

Post by jmcgough »

zug_zug wrote: post #377
cedws wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 21 and I think everything's going to shit as well... is it doomerism or reality? Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?

Those are a bunch of statements that angry people with agree with, but you haven't presented any evidence for your claims, and I think they're mostly backward. We're in the longest period of peace in thousands of years. Check out this cool graphic that puts in perspective: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ People are mad about politics, but I don't think it's any worse than the cold-war, kennedy assassination, mcarthyism, be…

There's way less trust in our society than they have been in many years. This is something that's been studied with evidence to back it up. You can see this in the week it took to elect a speaker of the house, something that hasn't happened (at that scale) since the 19th century.

Globally, nations that become more economically developed shift towards individualism and selfishness.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#420

Post by laidoffamazon »

snowwrestler wrote: post #349
tejohnso wrote: post #117

> 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,…

Maybe what is declining is a knowledge of history? Like, compare Andrew Jackson to Trump, or Reagan or FDR to Biden; it’s no contest. Public mental illness, drug abuse, homelessness were all worse during the 1980s and that’s just in my lifetime. Go farther back in U.S. history and there were entire cities of homeless, destitute, starving, and sick people. The idea that “homelessness” is even a problem that society sh…

I think a lot of problems I see is caused by a general lack of curiosity of any sort of historical norms. I think this leads people to extrapolate what is normal (The Trump presidency was not normal in most respects, and many people treated it as if it was) and what isn't (current living standards actually are extremely high compared to even 40 years ago, but people think standards are declining).
Post reply on HN