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How bad are things?

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Re: How bad are things?

#21

Post by BobTheCoder »

nirmel wrote: post #19
lkrubner wrote: post #2

This is a great excerpt: -------------------------- This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, or “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it. And whenever some online thinkpiece writer laughs about how good p…

I'm one of those people who say that almost all people in America have it really good, and everyone should stop complaining. I'm trying to understand why I'm wrong about the following: - Most people in America are struggling - Most people outside America are struggling much, much more, to a degree not fathomable by Americans. - Therefore, people in America should acknowledge they have it really good and stop complain…

Comparatively good does not mean actually good.

Re: How bad are things?

#22

Post by merpnderp »

BurningFrog wrote: post #12
erikpukinskis wrote: post #5

I think this is a fundamental property of capitalism. People who are happy and taken care of don't need to spend money and are terrible for the economy. If you can create problems for someone, you can market solutions to them. Some of the best selling products in the world, like Coca-Cola, are themselves creating the the problem they purport to solve. For a century, companies have been pushing cultural changes that m…

> I think this is a fundamental property of capitalism What precisely is "this"? > Some of the best selling products in the world, like Coca-Cola, are themselves creating the the problem they purport to solve. I can't imagine what problem you're referring to. Are you saying Coca-Cola creates thirst? > This has fueled economic growth while making us generally more vulnerable How do you measure that? By any measure I'm…

I imagine he's saying Coca-Cola makes you fat and diabetic, and thus unhappy, whereas it purports to make you happy. So it creates the problem it says it solves.

Re: How bad are things?

#23

Post by firebones »

nirmel wrote: post #19
lkrubner wrote: post #2

This is a great excerpt: -------------------------- This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, or “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it. And whenever some online thinkpiece writer laughs about how good p…

I'm one of those people who say that almost all people in America have it really good, and everyone should stop complaining. I'm trying to understand why I'm wrong about the following: - Most people in America are struggling - Most people outside America are struggling much, much more, to a degree not fathomable by Americans. - Therefore, people in America should acknowledge they have it really good and stop complain…

I haven't seen your logic nailed specifically as a logical fallacy [1][2], but there's something similar to a logical fallacy involved in the type of argument you're making. Namely, that having it relatively good globally should prevent someone from "complaining" (or seeking to improve their situation) locally.

[1] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProb... [2] http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=641605

Re: How bad are things?

#25

Post by wpeterson »

Viktor Frankl wrote about understanding human suffering as the one constant in all our lives and the one thing that binds us all together:

“To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.”

It's a good exercise to enumerate and guess the dramatic maladies of most people around you, but even that belies the larger truth of all of our shared suffering. It's the human condition.

Re: How bad are things?

#26

Post by jodrellblank »

nirmel wrote: post #19
lkrubner wrote: post #2

This is a great excerpt: -------------------------- This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, or “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it. And whenever some online thinkpiece writer laughs about how good p…

I'm one of those people who say that almost all people in America have it really good, and everyone should stop complaining. I'm trying to understand why I'm wrong about the following: - Most people in America are struggling - Most people outside America are struggling much, much more, to a degree not fathomable by Americans. - Therefore, people in America should acknowledge they have it really good and stop complain…

People in America should stop complaining ... and then what?

You acknowledge that Americans have actual, real problems. What is your plan for after Americans stop complaining about their problems? What does that achieve? What happens next? Why is that a desirable future state that you want to encourage?

Re: How bad are things?

#27

Post by nirmel »

firebones wrote: post #23
nirmel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those people who say that almost all people in America have it really good, and everyone should stop complaining. I'm trying to understand why I'm wrong about the following: - Most people in America are struggling - Most people outside America are struggling much, much more, to a degree not fathomable by Americans. - Therefore, people in America should acknowledge they have it really good and stop complain…

I haven't seen your logic nailed specifically as a logical fallacy [1][2], but there's something similar to a logical fallacy involved in the type of argument you're making. Namely, that having it relatively good globally should prevent someone from "complaining" (or seeking to improve their situation) locally . [1] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProb... [2] http://boards.straightdope.com/sdm…

Appreciate your citing this fallacy. We certainly can complain about problems that exist, regardless of their severity, perhaps because they affect us or people we care about.

But I think there is a real problem when worrying about one problem comes at the expense of caring about another more severe problem.

Contrived thought experiment: You have the magical power of either curing your own toothache, or curing the world of AIDS. You choose to cure your toothache because it affects you. I would argue you should have considered the alternative.

The problem is not that you can't care about problems that are less severe than others, but given finite availability of "care" in your own mind and in the world, it is better to direct our "care" to where it can have the biggest impact.

Re: How bad are things?

#28

Post by firebones »

harryh wrote: post #10
D_Alex wrote: post #9

But... from the same site, we have an article entitled "HOLOCAUST GOOD FOR YOU, RESEARCH FINDS, BUT FREQUENT TAUNTING CAUSES CANCER IN RATS", which includes this quote, that attempts to explain why holocaust survivors have on average longer lives: "One possible explanation for these findings might be the “Posttraumatic Growth” phenomenon, according to which the traumatic, life-threatening experiences Holocaust surviv…

I think an important difference between holocaust survivors and the people under discussion in this article is that the holocaust ended. One day the allied army showed up and the camps were shut down and the survivors were freed. Their lives immediately and dramatically improved. For most of the people mentions in this blog post there will be no such single & dramatic event.

While I don't think the comparison is perfect, Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow" illustrates several examples of cognitive biases where the expected suffering based on "area under the curve" (e.g., duration of pain in an non-anesthetized colonoscopy, or pain in a cold water torture test) is greater than the actual reported pain, mostly because we tend to report based on the later feelings (liberation, easing of pain) rather than peak pain or the integral of total pain.

Perhaps another way of putting this is that confirmation of hope is a pretty powerful antidote to prior pain.

Re: How bad are things?

#29

Post by pdonis »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #5

I think this is a fundamental property of capitalism. People who are happy and taken care of don't need to spend money and are terrible for the economy. If you can create problems for someone, you can market solutions to them. Some of the best selling products in the world, like Coca-Cola, are themselves creating the the problem they purport to solve. For a century, companies have been pushing cultural changes that m…

> People who are happy and taken care of don't need to spend money

Um, what? People who are happy and taken care of may well be that way precisely because they are able to spend enough money to either prevent problems from arising, or make them go away if they do arise. There is no magical way to make people happy and taken care of without doing productive work, and a free market is the best way we know of to efficiently do productive work.

> The sooner we can get out of this "money is a proxy for everything because markets are perfect" nonsense the better.

I would say that the sooner we stop trying to monkey with markets because we think we can do better when we actually can't, the better. I completely agree that not everything can be provided by free market transactions; but that doesn't change the fact that without all the stuff that can and should be provided by free market transactions, our current civilization could not exist. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live the kind of life that everybody would be living if our current civilization did not exist.

Re: How bad are things?

#30

Post by ThrustVectoring »

nirmel wrote: post #27
firebones wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen your logic nailed specifically as a logical fallacy [1][2], but there's something similar to a logical fallacy involved in the type of argument you're making. Namely, that having it relatively good globally should prevent someone from "complaining" (or seeking to improve their situation) locally . [1] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProb... [2] http://boards.straightdope.com/sdm…

Appreciate your citing this fallacy. We certainly can complain about problems that exist, regardless of their severity, perhaps because they affect us or people we care about. But I think there is a real problem when worrying about one problem comes at the expense of caring about another more severe problem. Contrived thought experiment: You have the magical power of either curing your own toothache, or curing the wo…

You have much better information and much better leverage to attack problems in your own life than those in, say, Sub-Saharan Africa. Plus, there's all the ways that you're a more effective altruist if you aren't distracted by a toothache, or aren't malnourished because you donated your entire food budget.
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