Hacker News Reader

Comment by wallace_f | Hacker News Reader

With respect to living conditions, it appears the "everything is gettng better," and "everything is getting worse," ideas are among the most succeptible to groupthink, and to cognitive dissonance.

I also see this at reddit. Depending on the topic, and how it is framed, it seems everyone is either in agreement that life getting better, or that it is getting worse.

For a counter example to your comment, most at this popylar HN thread(1) were in agreement that life is getting much better.

I could be wrong, this has just been my observation.

1- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16258434

View on HN

Not in dispute - the question wasn't whether life in the U.S. was getting better but whether it was getting shorter.

Ok, but just personally I would say life expectancy / healthcare access are primary measures of 'is life getting better or worse' for people.

It depends on whether the factors leading to shorter life are deliberate (or just willful) or accidental.

It's hard to flesh out self determination from ennvironmental factors. Not to sound overwhelmingly 'r/iam14andthisisdeep, but consider: 1) Nomadic hunter gatherers who have shortened their lifespans due to their lifestyle choices, or lack of choice/information in determining their lifestyle; and 2) App developers who may also have shortened their lifespan due to lifestyle choices, or even also lack of choice/information (ie sedentary lifestyle to afford rent/food/taxes/legal aid, sugar consumption due to inaccurate information from leading scientists regarding health risks).

I just think we can't really know which one we'd prefer had we not experienced both.

Nomadic hunters had quite long lifespans; agriculture introduced shorter lifespans and difficult lifestyles.

We agree on point two though: Laws allowing no overtime for developers have allowed long work hours that we now know are very harmful.

> We agree on point two though: Laws allowing no overtime for developers have allowed long work hours that we now know are very harmful.

Excuse me? Keep your grubby hands off my time. I alone should decide if, when, and how I sell my mortality for cold hard cash. Whether or not you think it's bad for me is of absolutely no importance to my right to do it.

And what if both of those are caused by self-indulgence? Ballooning waistlines reducing lifespans while concomitantly causing healthcare shortages (because of high demand due to obesity-related chronic conditions) is definitely "getting worse" but it's an odd and self-inflicted sort of worse.

It's a fact, not a question, that US life expectancies have declined. The way the decline has happened, suicide and drug overdoses compensating for medical advances that normally provide a slow, steady increase in life expectancy in most countries, give a strong indication that life in the US has also gotten worse for a significant fraction of the population.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com