The Natural Selection of Bad Vibes | Hacker News Reader

The Natural Selection of Bad Vibes

kevindorst.substack.com

27 pointsjger1514 comments

An alternative hypothesis: The Natural Selection of Good Graphs. People want their numbers to go up, so yes men tell them it is so. E.g. founders tell the VCs that business is booming, politicians tell their voter base unemployment has never been lower, etc., even if it takes some slight adjustments in the meaning of "booming" or "unemployment" to get that answer.

Do you want numbers to go up? If you see a graph showing economic growth and declining poverty, do you boost it or do you look for something to nitpick? Do you expect other people to be different?

This is why I always assume that the chart is lying to me. If important people won't stfu about how great the economy is, its likely they are "boosting".

That depends on if the graph is congruent with observed reality - and what reality is being observed, and expectations of accuracy of others and one’s own observations.

For instance, I’ve personally noticed increasing delusion (as in objective disconnects from testable reality!) across all media, especially during winter months and when political events are occurring.

I’m referring to blatant lies, gaslighting, self serving emotional manipulation, etc.

Both ‘sides’ are not the same, and one party is clearly doing it very blatantly and at large scale - but both are doing it regularly, it’s not hard to find examples.

I’ve noticed increased homelessness.

I’ve noticed employers flat out lying when posting jobs - posting false job postings, refusing to look at qualified candidates, blatantly discriminating against folks based on protected classes.

I’ve noticed a major shift in interpersonal relationships between genders professionally and personally.

I’ve noticed increasing propoganda pressure aimed at individuals undermining long term societal (and individual) needs.

I’ve noticed skyrocketing rents and still very high housing.

I’ve noticed very high grocery costs, rapidly increasing.

I’ve noticed major changes in people’s social engagement and behaviors, including the rise in very aggressive and predatory manipulative behavior.

I’ve noticed what appears to be society wide burnout and increasing mental health issues.

I’ve noticed at least one major sector of the economy (tech) being completely messed up, with an outsourcing boom building.

I’ve noticed a lack of correction (but messed up fundamentals and large scale vacancies) in commercial real estate, and less messed up (but still very disconnected from fundamentals like rent/own costs) in residential real estate.

Both of which I have investments in, in the past, and are now so disconnected from historical ‘healthy’ objective criteria it’s mind blowing. And have been for a decade now.

I’ve noticed every contractor I’ve talked to for at least the last 2 years appears to be in some sort of mental collapse, waay more than is typical. Same for book keepers/accountants and lawyers.

I’ve noticed that manufacturing jobs and certain types of labor jobs appear to be doing great. And some skilled jobs appear to be doing well too. But a lot of employers have ramped up abusive and predatory behaviors over the last 2-3 years, and have gotten really out of control.

Service type jobs, construction, and manufacturing jobs have been doing well though! Some white collar ones too. Though many of the employees in those cases feel like they’re getting their throats cut by inflation.

The economic growth is measured in turnover, which is ‘helped’ by increased prices and costs.

The poverty rate hasn’t meaningfully changed as far as I’m aware?

[https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/poverty-awareness-mo....]

And many of the folks can’t articulate the reasons why they feel screwed up, or how to get out of it, they just feel like things are going the wrong direction.

Notably, one party is using extensive emotional manipulation to convince everyone that they are under attack using whatever vague BS or outright lies they can come up with. But they are also objective things that are a problem for those same targetted folks that the other party is clearly lying about/gaslighting them about, which is feeding the fire.

Which, hey - there are also many other reasons why it is or could be doing objectively getting bad. No one can seem to agree on them though, so folks can’t make meaningful progress in a hopefully useful direction no?

[https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/americans-country-headed...]

And that is very dangerous, as it increases the opportunity for populists and dictators.

So it’s entirely possible the ‘real economy’ graph is going up and to the right (though if we factor in actual inflation, I’m significantly more skeptical) while the majority of the country is feeling miserable, poor, and stressed out.

> I’ve noticed increasing propoganda pressure aimed at individuals undermining long term societal (and individual) needs.

What does this mean

So I like the question it's asking, but disagree that the point of conversation is to "solve problems."

I think vibes are self-propagating. If every time I turn on the radio all I hear about is 2 wars (when we live in the most peaceful part of recorded history) then I am getting worry-signals over and over (people who lived in times much much worse often were in blissful ignorance of other continents). And that's just NPR, you wouldn't believe the kind of Alex-Jonesy stuff that goes out on the radio in every rural area I've ever visited.

So part one is media/clickbait having an incentive to inundate you with controversy/worry, which I think most people have trouble putting in perspective.

Then there's some other component, where some percentage of Americans are more bitter than I can explain and have very "burn it down"/civil-war attitudes with absolutely no plan or reason to think they would do well in a war and thought as to what a better system would look like. As best I can tell, this is partly from political parties having an incentive to create a false narrative that every single thing in crisis to activate tribalistic behaviors.

I feel like this aligns with the suprising phenomenon of underestimating everybody else's happiness.

Really interesting article, excited to see the followup!

A few things that I think the author could take into consideration. What is a country's population actively discussing versus other countries? Is there a factor between direct and indirect exposure of problems that may influence a person's stance?

Another explanation: chart wielding optimists are in the top 10% wealth bracket in the US (And their friends are), so they’ve experienced everything getting cheaper over the last 30 years.

Then they ignore scary graphs like the deaths of despair one here: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019...

Most bad vibes I see on social media, including Hacker News, have nothing to do with solving problems.

It's funny how the same people who reply that things are heading in a bad direction are happy to admit that things are better than they were 20 or 50 years ago. Probably it's not the direction they dislike but the speed of change.

I think, in particular the younger generations, have been let to believe that being pessimistic about the state of the world and it's future is some kind of moral virtue.

I don't think that cynical view is justified. There are and have always been countless problems with the state of the world. Our ability to know about those problems in detail has never been greater. Anyone who looks at and cares about those problems will have unlimited ammo for pessimistic thoughts and discourse - just as the article argues.

You don't think everyone saying they don't want kids because "I don't want to bring a child into this world" is making a moral statement?

Yeah, there’s a game theory take on this too.

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