In every country people think others are less happy than they themselves say (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: In every country people think others are less happy than they themselves say (2017)

#101

Post by simonh » Tue, May 30, 2023, 9:17 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #82

simonh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can accuse statisticians like this of picking and choosing metrics and you can choose other metrics to paint a different picture. That's really not the point the book is making though. What the book does is ask ordinary people what they think is happening on metrics do they care about, and are those metrics getting better or worse. So the metrics themselves are part of the story, but it's people's perception…

I don’t think it’s a distorted view to think in terms of the absolute numbers or even in terms of your society rather than just the global rates which makes many of those trends look far worse. The CCP’s genocide isn’t less important simply because they have a huge population and therefore it’s impacting a smaller percentage of their population than many past genocides. There’s a few positive trends that show up on t…

One way this is all very important is in how we think about it politically and in terms of policy. The fact is war, disease, poverty etc are shrinking drastically on a proportional basis because of work people are doing to make that happen, because policies are being implemented that have this effect. It's not by accident. So when we are evaluating whether such policies and projects are valuable and working, the voting public being aware of the fact that they actually are and to what extent is really important. The book is pointing out that this is largely not the case, and people being so badly misinformed is a real problem.

Those policies might also have negative effects, and that should absolutely be part of the conversation, but let's have a fully informed debate as best we can.

Re: In every country people think others are less happy than they themselves say (2017)

#102

Post by Retric » Tue, May 30, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #101

Retric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s a distorted view to think in terms of the absolute numbers or even in terms of your society rather than just the global rates which makes many of those trends look far worse. The CCP’s genocide isn’t less important simply because they have a huge population and therefore it’s impacting a smaller percentage of their population than many past genocides. There’s a few positive trends that show up on t…

One way this is all very important is in how we think about it politically and in terms of policy. The fact is war, disease, poverty etc are shrinking drastically on a proportional basis because of work people are doing to make that happen, because policies are being implemented that have this effect. It's not by accident. So when we are evaluating whether such policies and projects are valuable and working, the voti…

That’s a fair point, but people don’t seem to place a significant emphasis on foreign progress.

Where I think your point is strongest is people discounting the vast positive influence outsourcing has had on foreign economies long term development. People IMO take issue with sweatshops on products they buy because they can empathize with foreign workers more than vast swaths of poor people who would prefer working in sweatshops than their alternatives.

In the end none of that progress is judged as particularly important when faced with personal problems and any fig leaf issue which can justify their stance. ‘We can’t outsource UAE jobs to foreign workers with poor working conditions’ was really just we ‘can’t afford the competition.’ Farmers make the same basic argument and win not because their arguments are stronger but because they have more political power due to our political system favoring low population states. Which suggests the argument is ultimately meaningless.

Re: In every country people think others are less happy than they themselves say (2017)

#103

Post by CatWChainsaw » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:40 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #90

zuppy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found a book a while ago, that made me change my perspective about how I see the world as a whole. This is the book, it's called Factfulness: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37850908-factfulness There are a lot of bad things that happen around us (war, hunger, discrimination, etc), but we are at the best time in the entire human history, even with that. Compared with every metric in history, we are better. Even…

> we are at the best time in the entire human history, even with that. I've heard this ad naseum during my whole life. The word they always forget is "materially". People are on average better off materially than ever before (maybe), but that is far from taking into account what it means to be human and what life is. One example is that we have better quality beds than ever before in history, but maybe that doesn't m…

Speaking as a scientist, I agree with you. So I'd point the finger more at VCs and MBAs and techbros who think that if something doesn't generate money, it is worthless.