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Comment by somethoughts | Hacker News Reader

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 happening across the global population.

It helps me put stuff in perspective - of course mileage may var (and maybe it's just helping me delude myself into getting out a funk but it works!).

[1] Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

[2] See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income - Anna Rosling Rönnlund https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4L130DkdOw

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Rosling's work is fantastic, and I too occasionally watch 'How Not to be Wrong About the World' to keep my spirits up, too.

But. The past 5+ years have not been kind to the general arc of progress, particularly in already-developed countries in the West, and the US most of all. There has been genuine, real backsliding across the board on a variety of measures. And it's important to acknowledge that, too.

> [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

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)

Without looking deeper at any of these, most of the similar stuff from past years has ultimately been humbug, if technically correct. For example, first headlines I found from ’net-positive fusion energy achieved’ were from 2013 or so.

Researchers want to slightly oversell their discoveries, and the media wants to misunderstand to oversell them even more. Humbug 9 times out of 10.

That one is painful, since I wouldn't even call it technically correct, and even an undergrad should have been able to notice the error :

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/09/breaking-news-fusion-re...

So a order of magnitude larger output power promised... except when you count total input power and reasonable heat engine efficiencies (if installing one had been planned), it's unlikely they would even get more power out than in !

But then, the very same month I was also made aware of SP(ARC), which is revolutionary because it can (in theory) afford to be so much smaller than ITER (which is ridiculously large and therefore expensive in a super linear way) :

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/10/smaller-more-efficie...

> ’net-positive fusion energy achieved’ were from 2013 or so.

Yep, and they were clear that this was not ignition.

And yet, we only get 15 minutes with our primary care doctors. No one doubts the progress of technology: it is the quality of human interaction that's plummeted.

I’ve often had this thought. It seems that people are forgetting they are interacting with other people, rather than machines. The irony isn’t lost on me, as an engineer.

Yes. It’s a shame that more people than ever can’t afford the medical insurance to appreciate these advances.

Yeah and we developed the most efficient graphene nanotube batteries that never degrade!!

Sorry, I'm not buying it anymore. More than likely, none of that is going to help me or anyone I know from struggling just a little more each year.

I hear what you're saying. Things are improving, but what share do I have in it?

Another angle is if I struggle and work hard, what rewards accrue to others, and what do I get in return? The ROI on effort seems to be dwindling cause fakes are crowding out the real hard workers. And the buyers (ie wealthy investors) cant seem to tell the difference between expertise and bald faced lies. (I blame social media and rise of influencers for this, a bunch of fancy graphics and a iphone and now you know the 1 real secret the life long scientists have been holding back to our fatloss/clear pores/million dollar a month business).. Then again it was the missteps of institutions that even gave influencers their chance (a little lack of integrity ruins it for all)

A mind shift (that might help) is to realize that if you have a 401K or IRA or pension - which if you are on HN you have at likely at least have some modicum amount likely - then you are an indirect beneficiary by these profit seeking moves.

From the distribution chart it seems most of the US stock market is owned via IRAs/401Ks/defined benefits and insurance versus individual accounts. [1]

Those evil corporate landlords that drive up rents? Well, likely they are acting on behalf of former hardworking teachers of Canada. Sure there is skimming involved but a bulk is going toward to teacher's retirement. [2]

Of course mileage may vary whether this helps how one feels.

[1] https://i.insider.com/5746013852bcd044008c527e?width=1200for...

[2] Why Canada’s Teachers Run an Investment Firm in Singapore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HXcT_xlLB0

That's also a good point. Boomers legislated themselves to a bunch of entitlements at my expense, whilst simultaneously cutting any sort of good for my (and subsequent) generations.

This makes 0 sense to me.

They are arguing that "the system" changing would be more helpful to them and their friends than "technological advancement".

As the meme goes, ¿Porque no lo dos?

TL;DR

Sure tech progress is cool, but it's hard to care when I feel more isolated from my community than ever, the world feels "angry", and in many important ways my life feels much worse off than just a few years ago.

The meme about "but living standards doubling every X years!" is little comfort when you can't feel any of those impacts - not to mention that the material is scarcely the only thing that matters for human happiness.

I think the challenge is that the doubling of life standards is happening for people at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (i.e. basic survival to a comfortable life).

Most of the HN audience is likely at self-actualization stage where its going to be hard for society to help double life standards when every one's such standard is decided in such a deeply personal way for each individual. [1] It's also going to be really hard to measure progress on this front at a societal level.

[1] The importance of Maslow's hierarchy of needs

https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/the-importance-of-ma...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0PKWTta7lU

It also very much feels like any advancements in tech for the future will also only be accessible to wealthy people... As living costs are skyrocketing daily at the whim of overpaid and callous executives everywhere worldwide.

To be clear I'm not suggesting that specific advancements aren't being made. It's more like things that matter are going away and the things we're getting do not affect most of us.

eg: something like 99.95% of the planet (all but 1-2 Million) have 0 or near 0 benefit from most of those findings (save for maybe the vaccine). But important things are going away -- treating people well, having happy lives, justice and being treated fairly. It's not a good tradeoff IMO.

> eg: something like 99.95% of the planet have 0 or near 0 benefit from most of those findings

This is not the right way to evaluate the benefits of science. This is the year those advancements start having an affect. The same thing was true about microchips the year they were invented, and about radioactivity, and even about the health benefits of washing hands and drinking clean water. All scientific discoveries are an investment in the future, and those four I just mentioned have at this point touched nearly every single person on the planet, just like the above list may well do in the future.

There isn’t strong evidence that the things you mentioned are actually going away, why do you believe it’s true? Women and minorities are getting more justice and fair treatment than they have in the past. People treating each other well is subjective, and it’s arguable how well they ever did in the past. But murder, violent crime, property crime and hate crime rates have all gone down for the past ~40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States Happiness is also subjective, but take a look at the Human Development Index and note how all 66 countries in the list on this page have a positive year-over-year growth rate. All of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

> treating people well, having happy lives, justice and being treated fairly.

I think that depends a lot on where you live and what you look like relative to those around you. I wouldn’t think black citizens in the US in the 1950s would agree with what you’re saying. An Asian coworker of mine said he always thought it would be interesting to go back in time and live for a little bit in the 1940s, but every time he thinks that he has to remind himself what they did to Asians in the 1940s here in the US.[0]

I do think that tech (particularly social media) has amplified a lot of the bad social behavior that people have always had. I don’t think there’s more of it, just that it’s gotten louder. Someone who could only be an asshole to the people around them can now go online and be an asshole to millions of people around the world at once.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

I think the generations that were raised coddled, spoiled, and helicoptered are getting into the workforce and administration, and it shows. Police can do much less nowadays because of red tape. The bad apples can do less damage too, but the rest are less empowered as well and the productivity suffers.

Frankly the boomers were already super coddled. They have never known sacrifice, and raised us milenials in an even more hedonistic fashion. No one has the stomach to make sacrifices anymore, of any scale. Even convenience wins out over necessity.

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?

We cant fix that because our economic system is rigged against black people. They are kicked down and are forced to fight each other for scraps. The same rigging benefits you (probably) and thus you cannot think of a solution. This rigging starts very early. It's the looks they get in the supermarket. It's how educators think these kids are less smart and give them less chances. Their parents dont educate them in smartness-indicators like the use of certain words or the non-use of others. The parents dont educate them in these indicators because they feel these indicators are from "white people". They are proud of their own culture because they are rejected by the elites (mostly white/Asian). The elites in turn reject them for their "lower class"(read black) behavior. I bet you even do this. After that the easy way is to blame the black people for their upbringing/culture. That closes the loop and blames them for their own failure. But the cause and effects are the other way around.

Blacks had their families destroyed by slavery and now again by social programs that reward women for being single mothers.

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?

To be honest, the regime change in Afghanistan was kind of working, at least that's what it looked to me when I was there in 2010. Then the western world lost interest and withdrew

How long were we supposed to enforce the regime change there?

The right thing is let every country run in their way. Don't interfere. It is wise for U.S. army to withdraw from Afghanistan.

I resent the Taliban for depriving of the right of women to receive eductaion, but that doesn't mean I support meddling in other countries' internal affairs. Believe in Afghanistan will generate an enlightened regime in the future.

We've probably only spent 1/10 on it of what we sent to Ukraine last year since the beginning.

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 children being murdered. That shows their real values.

> 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...

Black people are people.

Murder is bad.

If black people are murdered out of proportion to all other races, by a wide margin, that's something that needs to be investigated.

Down vote me racists.

I wouldn’t use the word “genocide” in this context, unless you think what happens to young black men in US is similar to what happened in Rwanda.

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...

Some young men face a tough choice - work at McDonalds for $8/hr, or work for a local gang selling drugs on the streets. Yes, this choice in US is forced by society upon overwhelmingly black or latino men. But it is still a choice, and not every black man born in a poor neighborhood chooses a violent life of a gang member.

I have zero sympathy for criminals who're killing each other. Have you tried comparing murder rates of innocent non-violent civilians across different races?

Just wanted to say I watched them both and the Anna one was really helpful. Thanks.

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