Lots of overnight tragedies, no overnight miracles
collaborativefund.com
collaborativefund.com
Of course, knowing this doesn't help much when you're facing catastrophe that damages your own well being, and past performance is an unreliable predictor of future results. It's even possible we could see a reversal of many (or all) of these generally progressive trends if there is an unprecedented, massive collapse in the global economy.
But when the noise in your head of 'all the terrible things happening' is getting too loud, it can ease the stress a bit to remember that the trend is still upward in a lot of really amazing ways. When the chips are down, there's always tomorrow, and your odds of bouncing back better than before usually aren't as poor as it feels like in those moments of loss. And while it may not work for everyone, I personally take some comfort when I'm down thinking about all those out there who've been working a long time for a big win and finally got one today.
the assumption that things are getting better may be correct on the collective level but even here it depends where your samples are coming from. a developing country struggling with desertification or disappearance of drinking water or floods will likely not look better in a few decades. Capetown or other places may not exist in a few decades.
on the individual level it looks a lot bleaker even than this. Most individuals stuck in some hamster wheel are going to tell themselves they're doing it for "their future". But as Covid shows the future may not pan out well. Maybe their partners are dead, maybe they are dead. In the long run though everyone is dead. Our fallacy is thinking bad things only happen to others.
They're so high on hope and change it's inspiring. It's the opposite to TFA - everyone is living better than their parents did, the progress is visible between generations (between decades even). They know they still have problems, but they trust in their ability to deal with them like they're dealing with everything else.
literally been living abroad since the early 90ies most of it in either very poor or developing countries.
> They're so high on hope and change it's inspiring.
I have seen this attitude also in Japan which isn't "developing".
If one generalizes we can say all of Asia (the "Tiger" nations) have been "high" on hope. Most of the attitude of locals during a decade in Asia which I experienced was very forward-looking and upbeat. Returning back to Europe was incredibly depressing since everyone was complaining (even they had everything)
IMO it's about perceived wealth because I saw the same in Europe (Croatia and Poland have very cheerful people compared to the South of France which is full of rich French and Brits and everyone is complaining).
When I spent time in Poland between 2005-2010 there was a running joke about "Poland can't even manage to do the financial crisis properly" (7% growth iirc so Poland would be a "depressive Slavic country" where everyone is upbeat. ofc don't ask the Polish because they joke about being the only country where people are even more complaining than Brits. But if you come from France, Germany, Belgium or other very West EU countries where the attitude is hostile towards new technologies and ideas in general then Poland is refreshingly upbeat).
agree with you about a lot of this is attitude and a shared sense of trust among citizens in their systems. if we take Japan again, that same shared trust ("yes-saying", never question your elderly or superior, or blind trust in authority) is what has led to Fukushima disaster. There is huge value in moaning and being critical about all things that promise an easy fix.
and yes, I agree about the authoritarian mindset being bad for a lot of things. But that's the culture - you can't impose western values on a people that don't share the same underlying assumptions about humanity. That's the thing that got to me most: the people I talked to about it genuinely don't believe that "all people are created equal". If you don't believe that, then democracy makes no sense at all.
And those are just super obvious examples from top of head. Everyone is living better than their parents did is just not true.
in addition to these more extreme examples you listed, your statement even holds water for places in the West (e.g. US).
- Developing countries where things are visibly getting better every year
- Developing countries where there is a crisis or war of some sort to stop things getting better every year
- Developed countries, that the TFA talks about, where there is improvement but it's slow and not apparent.
As a rough estimate, of the ~190 countries in the world, the first group is by far the largest, and the second group is by far the smallest. Am I wrong?
Ah yes, that paradise in Xinjiang.
This is categorically wrong. And it's hard to know what to say when all evidence is against this.
As a side note, to a specific case you mention, the life expectancy in Capetown is the largest in the country and continuously improving.
Even in the fantasy world of the 'Media' where it might run out of water, in a few decade their lives would still be far better than now.
For anyone interested about this topic, the book Factfulness describes why this is the case and why our society focuses on the bad news.
Overall, global temperatures are still slowly getting higher for everyone on average, too.
I can't speak for the parent poster, but I find that "things are getting better" and other forms of 'incessantly positive' narrative give me some degree of dissonance. The bad things don't cancel out the good, but the good things don't make up for the bad.
The times I find myself talking about it are when things seem especially bleak, and a given positive spin just turns out to be that last straw of annoyance. Pointing it out just seems to bring back some sense of reality, sort of bracing for when the next awful thing inevitably comes up.
Personally, I try to keep it in my private notes, but sometimes things spill out. It's not an attempt to bring others down.
Of course, this is comment is just as moot.
So you see the world as definitely getting worse every year, and any news or indicator that it's improving is just a blip, and annoying because it gives people hope when there is none. Is that right?
Just like the Battersea power station was once the beating heart of London - delivering energy to industry and the people the UK government should build a giant datacenter and push out cheap (or free) vms to anyone who wants them. Push out computational ability to everyone.
Same with Raspberry Pis - send one to every student in the country, the economic benefit from the 8-10 genius level kids getting that R-Pi and being inspired into programming will pay for the few million other devices.
I also really like the arm of the German government that port-scans companies and contacts them if they have vulnerable services running, it is the duty of the government to protect its industry and citizens and this kind of preemptive public good is innovative and shows long term thinking without a desire for immediate, transactional payoffs.
These things raise the bar and make miracles more likely to occur by “gardening” them into existence
Once you lose, you generally have lost some resources or access to resources, so now you have less resources. Having less resources, you are less likely to be able to take some resources and try to win again?
Winning means you have more resources or greater access to resources, meaning you can try again.
The unfortunate part is in the losing cycle, you can get stuck at zero... you lost and hit zero... now you have no resources and no way to get out of your situation.
But I guess that would be seen as 'inflammatory' -when in fact it goes to exactly the same disjoin between statistics, and experiental sense. Nobody who doubts in AGW thinks the changes represent systemic, across the board, movement in time. They just think "its always been this variable" and miss the year on year accumulating effect.
We didn't save any lives that day. We didn't change the direction of medical advice. However, face was saved and the people that were dreading having to tell the client the deadline was not going to be met would call it a miracle. And since it happened after hours while we worked deep into the night, would that not also qualify as an overnight miracle?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17tEc9ETL4tjfTmNbpwJJ5OSx...
If so, I'm not sure I want to be listening to advice from them...
But you track it over 15 years, median overall survival had gone from 6 months to 10 years. All small incremental gains.
That’s the difference between a death sentence and manageable disease.