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Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

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Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#631
post #473
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah yes, the 10k€/m2 studio is probably my imagination.

I recently learned here on HN that you're probably just looking in the wrong place for a studio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34528025#34528779

For sure you could buy a land for 3 month of salary in the campaign. Where nobody can employ you.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#632
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…

I’m always a little stunned when this (and many sibling comments) is almost always the first response to something like this. It’s probably generally true, and an appropriate response to the most dire decline narratives or things easily disproven by stats . . . But like also: really? None of this resonates with you on a personal level? If yes are you that distrustful of your own anecdata? If no: I hypothesize that yo…

My experience has been that the more time people spend on social media and/or consuming the "news" (such as FOX/CNN), the more they have these feelings of impending doom.

That being said, some things are far better now and other things have gotten worse. Our social isolation and self-imposed echo chambers are the primary cause from what I can tell.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-- "sounds like you live in bad neighborhood" - make no sense in this context - its a global question - no? --

> People are noisy as fuck and dont seem to give a shit. Seems like every night there's someone with loud as exhaust on "sportish" car ripping around the neihborhood. For months this guy would start up his loud car at 7am and no one care when I complained. That is a very local problem, and is not a global question or observation. > Landlords seem extremely greedy and do terrible rent seeking tactics like fees upon fe…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#634

1) We just went through a globally historically unique event, the likes of hopefully won't be seen for another 100 years. 2) If you log off social media, your life will improve remarkably. That said, I love TikTok because I find it so inspirational, at least my feed is. 3) Depending on where you live, your sentiments can definitely be true. I feel California has gone downhill a lot in terms of safety, affordability,…

What inspirational videos do you see in TikTok? I have never used TikTok but I usually hear it described as entertainment more than motivation or inspiration.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#635
post #44

I think we're on the verge/in the middle of a stagnating/shrinking pie. When we're not growing in population and wealth things get dark as people chase zero-sum short term gains at the expense of others. Distrust runs rampant, people turn to the extraction of their peers vs expansion with their new friends. It will get better. Edit: Think bigger than the extractors!

> I think we're on the verge/in the middle of a stagnating/shrinking pie. When we're not growing in population If population were to decline, wouldn't that mean each person's piece of the pie is growing? If "piece of pie" is real estate or some other scarce resource that would seem to be the case.

No. "the pie" is total productivity, and "the pie eaters" is total consumption. Every human is both producer and consumer of this pie. The problem is not over/underpopulation, but the distribution of producers and consumers. Young people are more productive than old people, and that's why declining birth rates (and longer lifespans in retirement) are a problem. The scale is tipping to having more consumers than producers.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business cycle is not a sinusoid. It’s a fractal. It’s chaotic and oddly correlated. Also, sinusoids are exponentials. ;)

Oh! could you elaborate on this? To me even the name "business cycle" hints towards a cyclical/periodical movement. Sinusoids are not exponentials, sinusoids are periodical. They seem exponential for a short while though. The growthfactor also declines at some point. Could you elaborate on why you think its fractal?

It's a joke, sinusoids are sums of exponentials when you're talking about complex functions [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_formula#Relationship...

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#637
post #308

I don't know your age but I'm going to guess 30+. This is just happens when you get old. When you were younger you probably noticed that all the older people you knew pined for some earlier time (say the 1970s or 1950s). And you probably thought they were being silly. Well, now you've become one of those people. The fact is the world always seems better when you are younger, not because the world necessarily better,…

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?

Others already said this is wrong on basically every point, but I haven't seen this one commented yet:

> Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?

It's the smallest, easiest, most concrete thing. Dictionary, en masse, "as a whole". Sure, hyperbole, so let's say... how about a bit more than half, 51%? But you're talking about suicide (presumably), we all know that isn't 50% of the population, but I don't know the figure. "En masse" really, even as a hyperbole, sounds to me like it ought to be at least a few percent.

Wikipedia -> search 'suicide rate' -> redirects to article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

The worst country in the world has a suicide rate below 0.1%. Kids I couldn't quickly find a global rate for but in the USA (https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html) it's at 0.002%.

"En masse" is not even close to reality.

Every individual instance is horrendous for those involved, that's probably why you hear about it and why it seems so bad, but keep things in perspective when considering what the world as a whole is like.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not wrong, but THAT is the item you want evidence on? Especially here. This seems disingenuous.

Innovation in narrow fields is not representive of the greater whole. Sure, generative AI is booming, but mobile phones and computers haven’t evolved practically at all in the last 5 years. The general rate of innovation can be somewhat gauged in the increase of living standards, and to my understanding there has been little the past 10 years (in the West in general).

> phones and computers

I sometimes end the day with 50% or more left on my phone battery. That didn't happen before my last upgrade.

10GbE is finally starting to filter down to consumer-level things.

Cloud stuff is starting to have Arm systems as a standard offering.

I can run an SSD as my only disk, rather than as an expensive small cache in front of a platter drive.

Risc-5 seems to be really starting to become a thing, even if it's hasn't fully just yet.

Of course everything's a good bit faster, but that's kind of a given.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#639
post #582
post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

genocide of young black men Are you talking about a specific country in Africa? If so, what do you propose? Should we send US military to force a regime change? Because that worked so well in Afghanistan, right?

Right here in the USA. Our crime statistics show the greatest threat to a young black male is another young black male. Look at the Chicago shooting stats every weekend. Dig deep into gun deaths and you will see that is young men if color shooting andurdering each other in gang and criminal contexts that accounts for most of the deaths. And yet the media can only rise to care about gun deaths when it is white childre…

I wouldn’t use the word “genocide” in this context, unless you think what happens to young black men in US is similar to what happened in Rwanda.
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