Good News, Part 1 | Hacker News Reader

Good News, Part 1

johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com

32 pointsmathgenius13 comments

Kind of a missed opportunity to not stick an "everyone" in there :-). Or is the phrase copyrighted/trademarked?

    "(There seem to be people who are too optimistic—but
    strangely, I don’t know them personally. Am I just 
    avoiding them, or are they avoiding me?)"

Interesting question -- optimism, at least in the extreme, seems much rarer then pessimism.

When I watched Tomorrowland, this is the idea that struck me: that it had been a long time since I've seen anyone who was so determined to be optimistic.

There's a really great quote I came across in a comic [0]:

  Max: Fear is easy. Fear is cheap. 
    Instead of fear, we're going to give the people hope. 
  Sam: Fear vs. Hope. Hardly an even match. 
  Max: That's because you think of hope as something light
    and fragile. My version of hope has calluses and dirt
    under the fingernails and isn't past bringing brass
    knuckles to a fight.

I like to think there's a sort of grinding optimisim that really gets things done. Where people slog through the hard work, slowly and gradually dragging us to a slightly better future. You can knock a lot down with some FUD conflagration, but there's some stuff that will be lasting. And this article highlights stuff that will - at least - last a couple decades.

[0] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/Freefall

I think that custom demands that one provides a link to the actual comic: http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff2500/fv02418.htm

Yup, looking back TVTropes linked to it; not sure how I missed it the first time. It's one of my favorite lines, but I always have a hard time searching for it. At least I'll be able to find it through via the sideways channel of your comment now!

Most people are pessimists in speech, but optimists in action. Given that how little people do via actions, and how much more they complain and argue about, that's the only conclusion I'm able to draw.

Doing little would seem to point to pessimism in actions as well, no?

Spoken like a pessimist. ;-)

Lots of good news. But we should be careful not to misinterpret one point.

The Ebola virus isn't "defeated." It has gone back into hiding in animal populations. It may well appear again.

True, however we also have a vaccine now so pandemics are less likely. So that is an improvement in the state of the art.

Ebola has never been the global threat it has been made out to be. It can be controlled by simple sanitation and common sense (i.e. avoid contact with bodily fluids emanating from people with active cases of Ebola). This was demonstrated by the fact that when the virus was introduced in the U.S. it didn't spread. For Ebola to spread requires some pretty abominably lax public sanitation practices. Having a vaccine in hand is just a bonus.

Oh, there's also probably a treatment for ebola if someone can be bothered to do the study: http://blog.rongarret.info/2014/12/the-cure-for-ebola.html

I really find this type of news reporting refreshing. I've always found it hard to find a good feel-good-news site, it really lightens the mood. I've wondered why there was no central website that was dedicated to feel-good-news; instead, a bunch of small sites and posts scattered throughout the internet. Any reccomendations?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10793969

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