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Comment by wfunction | Hacker News Reader

> 2. There's a universal tendency for people to reminisce fondly about the good old days and contrast them with the ostensibly bad present. It has nothing to do with the truth. It is simply a syndrome of getting old.

Nothing to do with the truth? Maybe in your cases, but in others it very much does. In the good ol' days Democrats and Republicans weren't as hostile and unwilling to work together as they are now. In the good ol' days it used to snow way more in some places than it does now. In the good ol' days many places were less polluted than they are now. In the good ol' days people had to learn to actually ask each other out instead of swiping right on their phones. In the good ol' days businesses had longer-lasting relationships with their employees and didn't view them as disposable goods. Yeah, totally nothing to do with the truth, just people imagining things.

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Maybe that's your perspective, but...

LA is way less polluted than it used to be. People used to go to speed dating events where they have a pool of maybe 15 people who might be compatible. Democrats and Republicans both used to be racist and sexist. The weather in New England is much more pleasant in winter than it used to be. These days it isn't a black mark against your name if you've changed jobs 3 times because you wanted to try something new.

All about perspective. If you want to reminisce, go ahead, but there are two sides to the coin.

(a) I didn't say "everywhere", and I wasn't talking about LA. I'm glad you lived somewhere where that wasn't the case. The world is bigger than LA, or than the United States for that matter.

(b) My point was not that the good ol' days were paradise and we're all rotting in hell now. My point was that old people are not necessarily making $h!1 up in drawing comparisons with the good ol' days, in contrast with what the parent said. I thought this was obvious but evidently not.

Of course they're not making shit up, but they do have a selective memory, which was GPs point that you seemed to miss.

If things are distributed between bad and good, it doesn't matter how that distribution changes over time if the bad things from the past are forgotten in the comparison. It is still dishonest.

You are implying "the bad things from the past" have an objective weight. They could be insignificant, and in someone's eyes the past is truly "good".

I think the specific psycho phenomenon is that if there were 5 good things and 5 bad things about dating in the 50s, we generally remember the good things and talk about the good things. Now with tindr there's also 5 good and 5 bad and we say "wow all these bad things suck, back then it was just [the 5 good things that they remember]".

Remembering the good vs the bad probably aligns with someone being naturally upbeat or sad (glass full vs half-full personality).

Also I'm skeptical of that Democrats and Repubs line. In the good old days they got into fist fights on the congress floor.

Yes, people don't tend to reminisce about bad things. They prefer to leave them behind and focus on maximizing the good parts. That's normal, expected, generally healthy, and also not what the parent comment was saying.

As for the last part, it's hard to tell if you're referring to the 1800s or the 1900s as the "good old days" where Congressmen got into fist fights, but anyway, some digestible material: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/polarized-po...

> They prefer to leave them behind and focus on maximizing the good parts. That's normal, expected, generally healthy, and also not what the parent comment was saying.

The "4chan parable" is saying that though.

And I was not disagreeing with it.

I was addressing part (2) of that comment.

> In the good ol' days businesses had longer-lasting relationships with their employees and didn't view them as disposable goods.

This is the kind of thing the GP is talking about, and you've fallen into the trap. The rise of OH&S is a clear counterpoint to your statement here. For example, about a hundred people died during the building of the Hoover Dam. Such a death rate would be unthinkable in the modern era.

> In the good ol' days people had to learn to actually ask each other out instead of swiping right on their phones.

And if you were gay or even asexual, you had to pretend that you weren't or you'd be ostracised. Even to the point of marrying someone straight and making both of you miserable. And if you were pregnant, you were expected to hide yourself from public view, because being visible pregnant used to be distasteful.

> In the good ol' days many places were less polluted than they are now.

Good old weasel word 'many'. Many places are less polluted now than they were then.

The point is that you're cherrypicking just the good stuff, which is exactly what the GP is talking about. Few people would actually be better off if you turned the clock back 40 years, especially women and minorities.

There CAN be clean & neat progress (sorry for the caps) without the garbage. It's just that people don't care to make it nice and clean, they prefer to built on the momentum, they prefer to make it quick and dirty and if/when necessary tear it down and start again.

Twitter is like the planet. Dying. Slowly. But. Steadily.

Stephen is a big boy and can make big boy choices. I still don't get the infatuation with the social media, unless your livelihood depends on it (e.g. marketing your products/services, or plain and simple you ARE facebook or twitter or ... that make money out of these products)(products = people).

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