Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

news.ycombinator.com

771–780 of 835 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#771
You are not wrong, things are markedly worse, and they will continue to get worse because the people who have been put in charge have decided for you that when things fail, its because not enough resources were provided. Unlike engineers, they claim we need more resources, more power, more of everything, and it will always fall short as structural issues often do.

To understand how we got here you have to understand things which are no longer taught.

I would not expect a solid answer here or on any other social media. Given the complicity of social media platforms, most of what you see is fabricated and warped to increase engagement.

Most intelligent people rarely participate because of the ease at which censorship, amplification and deamplification occur.

To address some of your points, Landlords in most respects are the victims of the people who funded them to purchase property (the banks). There are cases where that is not true but they are a minority (i.e. Blackrock/Private Equity purchasing up 40-50% of the market in some areas). The cost is passed on.

Second, People are generally indoctrinated, and they have had that happen over such a vulnerable and long time that they become unthinking, and their ability to communicate with others that might reign them in has been interferred with intentionally.

They are not taught how to recognize harmful or manipulative content, and fall into a psychological state where some might argue they are no better than animals. This is one state.

Apathy is the other state where people can't react, its a direct attack against our way of life. If you can polarize large portions of the population into either of those two states, you can historically change governments. Tactics that cause disunity, and the inability to organize is what prevents us from responding.

Software has always been motivated and driven by the motives of people who develop it. There has been a long drive to push people to answer the 'can we do this', instead of the 'should we do this'. Hubris plays a large role here.

The idea of technology solving certain problems is laughable. The faith in science in that respect is a lie and completely ignores the brutal aspects of humanity which most are taught as sugarcoated versions. I've known people where they don't understand why most other countries hate or think Americans are stupid.

As for subscription models, this is what happens when you have a concerted and unopposed effort over 50 years to weaken property rights, and strengthen control in the hands of company's who have consolidated their marketshare to the point of monopoly. This isn't capitalism. The people you voted or didn't vote for chose this for you along with the other 200k+ people they represent. The most good for the most people... which isn't good at all.

The core driving force for why we have progressed so well was the division of labor, you can learn more about what was known by reading classic books like "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith (1778). Its a very fine balance which has been broken for quite some time.

The core of the issue, is money over time enables corruption. Money isn't bad, but a Ponzi inevitably leads to loss because its unsound, and relies on deception. What do you think our current (no longer fractional a/o 2020) banking system is? (A ponzi).

Based off what you've written, you appear to be vulnerable, and unable to critically identify truth from misinformation. This is a very dangerous state to be in. I would cut out social media and reeducate yourself on how propaganda works. You may find the book Influence by Cialdini useful in identifying the psychological blindspots that are often employed.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#772

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).

You're also missing the point that "innovation" in software does _not_ translate to "improvement" for a large part of the population.

You can use an app on your pocket-supercomputer to get a less-than-minimum-wage "independant contractor"/slave to bring you junk food at 10:00pm ? Sure, "Innovation". Is it "progress" ? Does it improve your life ?

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#773
post #553

"everything is subscription model [...] pay N times to access something thats only worth 1-3x" For me, 10 bucks a month for music and ~15 for movies/series (~1.5 concurrent subscriptions on average) adds up to less than a percent of my net income. For that, I can watch basically any series, any movie I want, and listen to any music I like. Compare to 99ct/song that was allegedly a very hard sell for the music industr…

>and rent hasn't changed since we moved in in 2018 This sounds incredibly lucky and rare and not the norm. I guess you have a private landlord and not an institution in a big city. BTW, can I ask in which city that is?

Yep, not what I expected either, but I think it goes to show that things can also be different and aren't necessarily bad across the board. You rarely hear someone 'complain' that their rent hasn't changed compared to the alternative, so the situation will always sound/feel worse than it is.

It's a city of around 50k people in west germany, close to other cities that are much bigger, and my building is less than ten minutes walking from the transport hub that takes you to one of those cities. Without service costs (main constituent: heating), we pay 600 euros for ~100m² (but a bad layout, so it's not all as usable and spacious as another 100m² apartment would be).

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#774
post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> None of this resonates with you on a personal level? Not really, no. Don't get me wrong, 5 years ago I was in the UK, I moved to Berlin towards the end of 2018. Visiting the UK again last December… it felt very broken. But it was the same kind of broken that I saw in Portsmouth when I was a child. And Berlin still feels as good as it did on my first visit. Landlords being greedy? Sure. That's one of the things Marx…

> everything is more stable and less crashy than I remember

I can't begin to believe you're not trolling here. Seriously. "Everything" is more stable ?

Pick a random every-day operation ("rent an hotel", "book a flight", "pay your taxes", "order a pizza", etc...). We'll go to the first website that will come out of a google search, and try to follow the process from start to finish using a modern browser on a modern OS of a modern computer.

I bet we'll get at least 3 to 5 bugs (either in page loading, some server crashing, some page layout issue, some text display, some translation, some form field validation, some form submission, some confirmation email not being sent, etc...)

The most charitable view I can have is that software is "as bad as it ever was, but there is now new kind of bad software that lets you badly do things that were not possible in the past". But claiming an "improvement", especially in stability, seems like a stretch.

There was a distant time where those operations were done by calling a human being on the phone. Those were awkward conversations to have, and there were "bugs" in those too - but human interactions had had a few thousand years to iron out those bugs.

As a software engineer bringing my own set of (hopefully not too buggy and moderately useful) software into the world - I seriously miss those days.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly. what more can do you with it? You can't watch more shows or play twice as many games of chess or something. Yes the jump from 240p to 4K is enjoyable, but Marvel movies in 4k are still vacuous compared to something with meaning in 720p.

You can take better photos, have a longer lasting battery, send emergency sms via satellite. Scan objects and rooms with LiDAR, generate ai images locally with the massively improved SoC. Just to mention a few things off the top of my head. Just because _you_ aren’t doing anything interesting with the new tech, doesn’t mean innovation hasn’t been happening.

I agree innovation is happening, what I mean is that meaningful life change isn't happening. Yes I'll be thankful to be rescued if the emergency SMS works.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#776
post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of this resonates with you on a personal level? Not really, no. Don't get me wrong, 5 years ago I was in the UK, I moved to Berlin towards the end of 2018. Visiting the UK again last December… it felt very broken. But it was the same kind of broken that I saw in Portsmouth when I was a child. And Berlin still feels as good as it did on my first visit. Landlords being greedy? Sure. That's one of the things Marx…

> everything is more stable and less crashy than I remember I can't begin to believe you're not trolling here. Seriously. "Everything" is more stable ? Pick a random every-day operation ("rent an hotel", "book a flight", "pay your taxes", "order a pizza", etc...). We'll go to the first website that will come out of a google search, and try to follow the process from start to finish using a modern browser on a modern…

> ("rent an hotel", "book a flight", "pay your taxes", "order a pizza", etc...).

I have literally never had any of those crash, which is what I was writing about.

> some page layout issue, some text display, some translation

Almost certainly on some of them, but that's not what I was talking about.

I have, 4.5 years ago, had an airline not understand how a + before the @ works in an email address. But it didn't crash.

And Ryanair's app and website sucks, but it didn't crash on me.

Booking hotels is reliable enough I've done a 1000 km cycle ride where I booked each hotel en route 2-3 hours before arriving because I didn't know which village or city I would reach before that point.

Taxes I can no longer do online because the UK won't let me do their bit online now I live abroad and I don't trust my understanding of German tax terminology for the other bit so I have an agent, but that's a legal issue not a website limit, and I can't remember ever having had a problem with HMRC online.

Likewise, the biggest problem I've ever had with buying a travel pass digitally was 5.5 years ago, because BVG didn't support iPad (not a typo, my phone was a Blackberry and I had an iPad).

I grew up with "System Error Type 11 (Restart)" on a weekly basis; nothing like that happens any more.

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#777
post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen scrubs in use as routine shift wear for about 20 years. Easy enough to get fresh ones if they get soiled mid shift.

Yeah I'd say it started probably in the 90s and by maybe the early 2010s it was acceptable to wear scrubs in any sort of medical situation. Like even the receptionists at a opthalmologist would wear them.

That's kinda funny. But if it saves the receptionist buying other work clothes

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#778
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…

> the greatest threat to a young black male is another young black male

And the greatest threat to a young white male is another young white male. Does that mean that there's a genocide of white men by white men?

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#779
post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the greatest threat to a young black male is another young black male And the greatest threat to a young white male is another young white male. Does that mean that there's a genocide of white men by white men?

Yes, but the murder rate of young white men does not approach that of black men.

More black men are murdered than white men as an absolute count, which is horrific considering that whites outnumber blacks by at least 4:1.

Is it more racist to not talk about black on black violence, or to address it directly? Refusing to acknowledge the issue so we can tailor policy to save black lives is white privilege exemplified.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/251877/murder-victims-in...

Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

#780
post #727
post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you call a murder rate of 81.7/100000 for black men aged 15-24? https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

To me, a murder rate of 94000/100000 is a genocide, and 81.7/100000 is not.

More black men are murdered in the US than white men. But whites outnumber blacks by at least 4:1.

Call it whatever you like, but acknowledge that this is horrific.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/251877/murder-victims-in...

Post reply on HN