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Comment by rjkennedy98 | Hacker News Reader

This article/video explains why so many people have completely lost faith in our technocratic elite.

The idea that "You’re 37 times less likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than you were at the turn of the century" makes a large difference in the happiness of people is ridiculous.

Why are people pessimistic about the future?

Maybe its because the rates of addiction (including to smart phones and other screens), of psychiatric disease, and of suicide are all on the rise.

Maybe its because rates of marriage and church attendance are on the decline.

Maybe its because of the debasement of our culture and education.

Technological progress is not the same as progress of the human condition. Our technocratic leaders would like to believe it is, but it is not.

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> The idea that "You’re 37 times less likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than you were at the turn of the century" makes a large difference in the happiness of people is ridiculous.

I believe he put that in as an interesting, somewhat unexpected benefit of modern life. His next few arguments are what really backs up his points.

> Maybe its because rates of marriage and church attendance are on the decline.

As someone from a country where the church held far too much sway and still tries to hold back the rights of gay people and forbid abortions I take a lot of hope from the fact that people are attending church less.

> Maybe its because of the debasement of our culture and education.

I don't think western culture or education has been debased at all. Can you elaborate?

Plenty of people complain about their culture disappearing, and being replaced by the universal culture (usually, but wrongly, called "Western culture" or "American culture"). It's one of the many factors contributing to the present rise of nationalism in Europe.

Personally, I don't mind the universal culture. But then, I'm just comfortable in it; many people are not, and cling to their local traditions.

>usually, but wrongly, called "Western culture" or "American culture"

Usually, but not wrongly. Not only because bona fide American culture (even morals and soapiness) are the majority of what's replacing local cultures, but also because the little of regional cultures that becomes international does so after it passes from an American filter/lens.

>Personally, I don't mind the universal culture. But then, I'm just comfortable in it; many people are not, and cling to their local traditions.

In other words, you don't mind a base monoculture and the loss of untold regional treasures and ways of human expression.

Let me clarify what I meant: it's not wrong that it's Western/American because it's where it happens to be coming from, which is just the function of US being currently the biggest economic and cultural influencer. But I say it's wrongly called because at its core it's not American - it's older than America, and lots of its part have nothing to do with the US or the Western world.

The universal culture is, simply, what wins on the cultural market.

Looking through this lens, McDonald's and Coca Cola, and cars and Internet shopping, are present worldwide not because of American imperialism, but because they are better, in many aspects, to what they replace locally. People find utility in fast food restaurants, sweet beverages, urbanization, "western" healthcare, etc. The US isn't parking its aircraft carriers in the Baltic to tell Poland that we have to open Starbucks (and similarly structured competition), nor does Sweden threaten us with another Thirty Years War if we don't start buying prefab furniture. All of those won on the cultural market, and they're only associated with the West because the West is leading in economy and innovation, contributing the most to the universal culture at this time.

> In other words, you don't mind a base monoculture and the loss of untold regional treasures and ways of human expression.

Actually, I don't. Or put another way - I'm not particularly fond of trying to artificially protect existing local cultures and old traditions. Cultures are mostly arbitrary anyways; I don't care much for what kind of folklore dance I am supposed to engage in at weddings. But I accept that other people do, so I'm also against forcing the choice. But not forcing the choice is also precisely what makes universal culture universal - it's the set of things people adopt on their own over what they did previously.

Artificial? As opposed to the natural mechanic that paints billboards with coca cola commercials, or undercut things like tap water in terms of price through hostile negotiations for water rights?

The phrase he used was "artificially protect". This would be in comparison to allowing culture to change over time naturally.

Yes, but what is "natural change", and how does it relate to commercial interest? Or indeed overt colonialism?

There's no "naturally" when one side has all the might and the bucks.

Previously, human groups were like two separate containers, one containing coffee and one containing milk. Now, through technological advancements and many other developments, they have been brought together into a single cup. The laws of physics demand that the two liquids in the cup combine into a homogeneous mixture.

This is an imperfect metaphor -- in reality, the separate containers have only been partially brought together, and human individuals are more complex than beverage molecules. But I think the idea expresses noteworthy amounts of truth.

Dickens was the most popular entertainer of his time. Shakespeare was widely popular as well. Both are considered too difficult for most audiences now days. Can you imagine a writer like Dickens being the most popular in contemporary America or in the UK? Our most popular figure is Kim Kardashian.

And my point about the Church was not to say that religion is all good, but to point to the fact that people are disconnected from communities. UK just hired a Minister of Loneliness. Its a serious issue.

> Dickens was the most popular entertainer of his time. Shakespeare was widely popular as well. Both are considered too difficult for most audiences now days.

Difficult largely because of the relatively rapid rate of drift in English idiom (which is a unique feature of English); but less popular largely not because of difficulty but drift in taste for entertainment media which is more about shifting fashion than any issue with capacity.

I think you are disregarding the degradation of the human attention span that modern media has brought to our minds. If you really think there is no difference in capacity between the minds of that time and now, just google "technology and attention span" and spend some time with the results. If you can manage to hold your attention long enough to read through them :) I know hardly anyone anymore who can sit on a couch and read for even 5 minutes without a break in attention to do something on their phone. The capacity absolutely is not there.

Dickens was serialized - there was only so long you could spend reading new Dickens before you ran out of it. (I haven't been able to find the typical length of a portion, though.)

On the other hand, plenty of people will spend a weekend on the new Harry Potter.

32 pages. <http://dickens.wpi.edu/history.html>

> I know hardly anyone anymore who can sit on a couch and read for even 5 minutes without a break in attention to do something on their phone.

I definitely don't align with this sentiment, sounds more like who you are surrounding yourself with. Many of my friends and coworkers are avid readers, and books are a common discussion topic.

There is also a flip side to how technology has affected our attention span. Consider how many people now "read" while driving, working out, doing chores. Yes we may crave more stimulation, but it means while doing laundry or dishes we are going to seek out audiobooks and podcasts. I read more than ever now that I can get just about any book instantly, and read on the go

When Oliver Twist was published (1838), a third of the British population couldn't read[1].

[1] https://www1.umassd.edu/ir/resources/laboreducation/literacy...

14 percent of adult Americans demonstrated a “below basic” literacy level in 2003, and 29 percent exhibited a “basic” reading level.

That is with public education.

As always, when critiquing someone, the Principle of Charity should apply.

> The idea that "You’re 37 times less likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than you were at the turn of the century" makes a large difference in the happiness of people is ridiculous.

Obviously, no one but an idiot would claim quantity of lightning strikes is a key asked of human happiness. The fact that you presume Pinker is stupid enough to make this claim may say more about you (or the thoughtfulness of your argument) than Pinker.

Instead, the charitable interpretation is that lightning strikes are a great proxy for "random bad thing that can happen to people". If we're better able to survive lightning strikes, we're likely better able to survive lots of other unpredictable misfortunes.

I suspect pessimism toward the future is rising because more people are not finding life to be satisfyingly meaningful.

I think many people have been moving away from traditional sources of personal meaning (religion, civic duty, nuclear family, etc), but we haven't been replacing these age old 'guiding principles' with anything that's equally compelling. Instead we seem to be focusing our lives ever more around unshared point sources of life experience like social media and entertainment streams, which are largely passive and unshareable. This passivity increases separation and pushes us away from awareness and involvement in the needs of other people who are important to us, much less inhibits us in serving those needs.

That seems like the perfect recipe for loneliness.

> Maybe its because...

Disclaimer: all of this is entirely unscientific, just observations.

From the perspective of a South African, we didn't have people walking into a public place (church, concert or otherwise) and shoot up a crowd. In general, undeveloped countries seem to have fewer problems with psychopaths (disregarding the ones in charge). I find this immensely curious.

One thing that Facebook has taught me is that problems are like biodiversity. It seems as though every time we solve a problem a previously minor problem becomes a major one. One example that many here should be familiar with is Facebook: it solved many quality-of-life problems, but in the process has allowed other unforeseen problems grow out of control. I seriously wonder whether rampant psychopathy (relationally speaking) is a symptom of development (technological, economic, social and otherwise). It's logically possible to see how: you no longer have to worry about where your next meal is coming from so, provided predisposition, you can start obsessively worrying about your fabricated issues.

Up until relatively recently, the entire human race was involved in a desperate struggle to survive. Now, while still a minority, a decent percentage of the human race no longer has to worry about where their next meal is coming from. These elite are typically concentrated in specific geographic regions, which is where I've noticed that most of these "novel problems" exist.

> BillG: The world is getting better, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.

I'll add to that: until our evolution reaches a point that we are no longer in a fight for survival (by ways of nature or science), we won't feel as though the world is getting better. We are incessant worriers by nature.

> church

The church kept us in line and now that it is being rejected, we are acting like rebellious children away from their overbearing parents for the first time - doing everything we weren't allowed to do. This will pass, and we'll have a slew of new problems to replace it.

> In general, undeveloped countries seem to have fewer problems with psychopaths (disregarding the ones in charge). I find this immensely curious.

My pet hypothesis on this is that humans are wired to cope with extreme stress, scarcity, and violence. In an environment of relative peace and abundance we develop a whole host of neuroses. Most cope through entertainment, drugs, and other outlets, but some just totally flip out.

It's like what happens to hunting and working dog breeds when cooped up in a little apartment. They start eating the furniture, digging holes in the walls, chewing lesions into their skin, etc. Watch a large predator animal walk nervously in circles in a zoo.

Uh? Your point about the church is weird: I live in France which has rejected (mostly) church a long time ago and this hasn't really created a 'slew of new problems'.

Not all churches require monogamy, but I will use that as an example. This remains a global problem irrespective of how it affects you: institutionalized monogamy did prevent, or at least limit, the STD epidemic. That's one objective problem off the top of my head, there are other subjective problems.

That's not to say that institutionalized religion didn't have problems, it had many, we simply now have to find other ways to solve the problems that it did.

> Maybe its because rates of marriage and church attendance are on the decline.

The importance of both are relative to your culture. Going to church doesn't make for a better society; have you forgotten all the wars started via leadership from religious institutions? Have you ignored how much more statisitically peaceful your atheistic counterparts are?

Plenty of cultures have been just fine and happy for hundreds of years without having marriages weighted as heavily as ours. Hell, male exclusively led marriages used to be a thing that was on the decline that conservatives used to lambast also. Do you think we should return to that?

> Maybe its because of the debasement of our culture

Good; there are plenty of people that were killed and marginalised because of modern western cultures. LGBTQ violence is still a major issue because of certain western cultures.

Frankly it's not too hard to envision a recursive philosophy where you don't worry about what others are doing so long as they are not interfering with the pursuit of happiness of others. It shouldn't be that difficult to realize that western cultures are not the only means to be happiness and that other cultures have been just as happy for hundreds of years with institutions that directly contradict ours.

Your culture is as welcome and significant to outsiders as much as some mormon's religion is to you on a weekend morning. Don't force it on us because you've grown fond of it; if it was such a great idea for us, we would have bought into it at some point during the first 10,000 times it was mentioned during our childhoods.

I suggest its the poltical news cycle which emphasizes bad news at the expense of good. The US democratic party did not trumpet the progress of recovery from the Great Recession. Instead it focused on the inequalities that remained. True the opposition also focused on the problems of the middle class. But turned 180 degrees once in power claiming to own the economic recovery.

> Why are people pessimistic about the future?

Maybe it's because of widening economic inequality and the fact that peoples’s sure jective feeling about their life condition is driven more by relative than absolute material position.

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