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Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

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Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#561

Post by lucb1e »

jiscariot wrote: post #150
Tool_of_Society wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this is new. I can tell you stories of similar experiences going back into my childhood in the early 80s. I know people who can tell you airline stories from the 60s that are similar.

Much of this is new. Governments have taken much heed to anything that could be construed as having "disparate impact", and are running a reverse broken-windows experiment on the ground. When in the past did we decide we were going to prosecute theft only if the total value was greater than 1k?

I assume always, when corrected for inflation.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#562

Post by jknoepfler »

I'd add to others' points here: if you can afford to, live somewhere that provides an atmosphere that makes you happy. The seven years I lived in Seattle made me deeply unhappy in many of the ways you describe. Moving somewhere where people are generally kinder and more conscientious of one another has had a considerable positive impact on my outlook on "global wellbeing."

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#563

Post by Gigachad »

amelius wrote: post #411
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.

Social media might play a part but I'd argue it's not the biggest one. It's urban sprawl, car dependency and now remote work. People are being isolated in boxes out in the suburbs surrounded by no points of interest or areas to hang around.

The most important thing for socialization is to just have physical proximity to other people in shared spaces, be that a park, office, school, club, etc. If anything, social media is just enabling people to sit in their boxes longer while still getting some form of socialization.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#564

Post by lucb1e »

bluedino wrote: post #355
scoofy wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I think the existence of new tech makes it harder to enforce. In the 80's there was an issue with noise on the subway when boomboxes became popular, but they were heavy and expensive to operate. With smartphones and bluetooth speakers, literally anyone on the subway can annoy the rest of the train car with minimal effort. In fact, it takes a bit more effort now (remember headphones, or mute phone), to actually…

The number of times I've heard phones/iPads blaring music, kids cartoons, etc while at a restaruant is absurd. I don't even notice it anymore. People feel entitled to have their kids streaming Cocomelon 24 hours a day and ignore you or challenge you to a fist fight if you as them to turn the music down. "This is TGI Fridays it's not supposed to be quiet"

> blaring music, kids cartoons, etc while at a restaruant

The heck, where in the world is this? I've literally never seen anyone do that. Recently (1-2 weeks ago?) someone did this on the bus, after loud phone calls they opened some video app and started watching the most random crap with loud noises on speaker. The bus is not a quiet place but even so, after a few minutes someone told him off.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#565

Post by [deleted] »

Barrin92 wrote: post #457
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>You don’t need to be invested in the finer details of global politics Unless of course part of the majority of the world's population who actually lives in it. I had more than a few friends who were doing their software engineering jobs from a bunker last summer. Missiles in Kaliningrad are about 10 minutes travel time out from my parents home. Whenever I see these kind of "the news isn't real" takes I'm like 99% su…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#566

Post by [deleted] »

AnonCoward42 wrote: post #542
operatingthetan wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaslighting by definition requires ill intent or manipulation and you are conveniently ignoring that. In your version pretty much any internet disagreement is gaslighting.

> Gaslighting by definition requires ill intent or manipulation and you are conveniently ignoring that. You cannot determine or know ill intent, so it's not really helpful as a property. > In your version pretty much any internet disagreement is gaslighting. Disagreement alone does not suffice. You need to tell the other person that what they see is not real and/or that they imagine things. But as I said, it's a bit…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#567

Post by mncharity »

robocat wrote: post #516
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…

> [2] See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income - Anna Rosling Rönnlund Here's the link to view the photos by income: https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street

The photos are CC BY.[1] Chronophoto, a game of guess the years of these photos, is currently on the front page.[2] So how about a similar game of guess the incomes?

Compared with historical photos, the narrower scope of dollar-street photos might be less fun? Or not - it's a richly textured image set. Deep linking the dollar-tree site could give richer follow-up context. Perhaps paired guesses of income and location, might quickly teach their relative salience?

[1] https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/about? [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34559867

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#568

Post by onesociety2022 »

I don’t get why people keep complaining about streaming subscriptions. The whole appeal of something like Netflix is the unbundling of cable packages and getting rid of annual contracts. I don’t need to subscribe to things I don’t want to watch (unlike a cable bundle where you pay for channels you don’t care about because they’re part of the bundle).

Even more importantly, there’s no annual contract. Subscribe to Netflix for a month or two, watch the 4 shows you care about and unsubscribe for the rest of the year. Switch to a different service for the next couple of months. This is amazing - I basically get to watch the best shows available on any service for under $20/mo (this was never possible with cable). No one asked you to keep all of your subscriptions active all of the time. I always subscribe to these services via iOS and so canceling takes exactly 5 seconds (you don’t ever have to call anyone or go hunt down the unsubscribe button hidden deep inside some website ever).

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#569

Post by mFixman »

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,…

Yeah the mid-'80s sucked in the US, but do you have any modern examples of decline? :-)

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#570

Post by p1esk »

fwungy wrote: post #418
ignoramous wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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?

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