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Comment by Geminidog | Hacker News Reader

The world has always been too complex too understand.

Even before human society became complex, the natural world around us was already immensely complex.

Additionally human society was already too complex too understand from before we were born. This title implies he was waiting for the complexity to happen. "Finally."

Things may appear more complex because of the internet and social media. Really what's happening is there's a lot more information that's accessible to us and a lot of it is useless.

One thing people don't realize is they think society is falling into chaos with the pandemic trump and all the garbage they report on the media.

What they don't realize that there has never been a time in history where the world is more at peace then there is now. We are extraordinarily lucky to live in these times, source:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/12/the-world-is-not...

But humans like drama so to get more views people have to dramatize everything. Really nothing is happening. Trump or Biden being president is more likely to change what you see on the news over an actual change to your way of life.

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Yay, someone else that's sober.

I dont understand the constant need to radicalize every problem as we technically are "fixing" things. Less war, less natural cause deaths other than old age, less world wide poverty, the world is getting better on a whole. Still plenty of serious problems. No one should discount that. But I had to stop watching the general news the past few months because it seemed like we were living during the black death, world war 1 and 2, and the American civil war (I'm in the US) all at the same time. We're not. Things aren't perfect, but holy shit things were far worse roughly 100 years ago. Theres a point where every radical on any political spectrum needs to get hit with a belt in the ass and told to stand in the corner, same goes for the general media. We all need to take a deep breath, be grateful that things aren't as bad as during our grandparents time, quit thinking the world will end tomorrow, and calmly fix things together. But hey, that's all crazy talk and doesn't produce ad clicks for google, facebook and twitter.

> world war 1 and 2, and the American civil war

More Americans have died from COVID in the last 9 months than the Americans who died in WWI, and we've surpassed the American South's Civil War deaths, and are approaching how many died fighting for the North, too.

The us population in 1918 was about 100 million. It's now about 330m. We have 3 times plus the population since world war 1.

116k americans died in ww1 with a 100m population.

271k died of covid with a 330m population.

One death is one too many, but we recovered from the civil war which was 600k+ deaths with a 31m population at the time.

Covid isn't the end of the world. We can recover. The world has been through far, far worse. Stop being a fucking doomsday prophet.

>> More Americans have died from COVID in the last 9 months than the Americans who died in WWI, and we've surpassed the American South's Civil War deaths, and are approaching how many died fighting for the North, too.

> One death is one too many, but we recovered from the civil war which was 600k+ deaths with a 31m population at the time.

> Covid isn't the end of the world. We can recover. The world has been through far, far worse. Stop being a fucking doomsday prophet.

Let's have a nuclear war, then. Sure it will cause massive death and destruction, but we don't have to worry about that because the Black Death shows we'll eventually recover [1].

Massive tragedies from that past don't free us from having to worry about similarly-sized tragedies in the present, but those acknowledged tragedies can help us acknowledge the scope of the current tragedy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death: "The Black Death ... is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population.... it took until 1500 for the European population to regain the levels of 1300."

Wtf? So you take the statement that we can recover and shouldn't believe in doomsday as let's just kill each other? What are you, a Stalinist?

You realize the rhetoric of life being over as we know it is increasing suicide rates. People are literally killing themselves because they dont want to live in the narrative that life as we know it is down hill from here. What in the hell is wrong with you people? Yea, I dont like Trump that much either, that doesn't mean we just burn the fucking world or imagine that it's incapable of recovery.

When I say we can recover is strictly to keep your head up high and continue to do some good because it can payoff down the line. Giving up and crying about doomsday will lead to nothing but more pain and suffering. But I guess you want that since you're a nuclear war advocate.

> Wtf? So you take the statement that we can recover and shouldn't believe in doomsday as let's just kill each other? What are you, a Stalinist? ... But I guess you want that since you're a nuclear war advocate.

Do you understand sarcasm?

> You realize the rhetoric of life being over as we know it is increasing suicide rates. People are literally killing themselves because they dont want to live in the narrative that life as we know it is down hill from here.

There's actually little to no "rhetoric of life being [permanently] over as we know it [due to COVID]" except as a straw man. There is rhetoric arguing for temporary sacrifices for the greater good, and also rhetoric downplaying or denying the situation to argue against making those sacrifices.

A proper appreciation of the seriousness of the situation is not "being a fucking doomsday prophet," as you said; rather it's the mindset that steels one to make the sacrifices that need to be made with the hope that they'll work.

You have to frame the number in percentage of population. More people died because there are more people period.

Also you need to make your timeline bigger. Extend the timeline to Past the dark ages.

The population has only increased by 15% since September 11, 2001, and yet in the last 9 months we've had 91 times more American deaths from COVID than we did on 9/11. Every 2 to 3 days, we have another 9/11's worth of COVID deaths.

September 11, 2001 was recent news, I'm old.

The initial poster (me) is talking about timescales much bigger than 9/11. There was a time where if your neighbor dropped dead from the black death it was normal. Right now most people don't know anyone who was even in the building when 9/11 happened.

Keep in mind the amount of car accidents in the US constitutes a mass slaughter on a scale far larger than anything you can comprehend yet you are ignoring it. There are plenty of things far worse than COVID deaths and 9/11 going on in the world right now... YET we are still more at peace and safer than we ever have been before.

Does that make you evil and heartless for completely ignoring how car manufactures and drivers are slaughtering people? No. It doesn't. But it does highlight the fact that you are using and throwing around numbers to raise emotions the same way the media does.

Just to keep things in perspective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...

Both are about 100 deaths per day JUST in the US.

> Keep in mind the amount of car accidents in the US constitutes a mass slaughter on a scale far larger than anything you can comprehend yet you are ignoring it.

I'm not ignoring it, I've even posted about it recently[1]. A typical flu season incurs more deaths than automobiles cause. The former incurs about 40k, while automobiles cause about 32k.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25258632

So then why throw numbers around and compare things to 9/11. There's no point. The pandemic is something we have to deal with but it doesn't change the fact that we are more at peace than ever before.

Why do you have to turn everything up to 11 and call red alert, there's no need.

Well, I find it strange that people are easily triggered by reality, so much so that they want to drown it out, ignore it and think that those who are not content with the status quo should be "hit with a belt in the ass and told to stand in the corner", like the comment I replied to said.

I also find it strange that I'm being accused of "calling red alert" and am told to "Stop being a fucking doomsday prophet"[1] for stating simple statistics by the very same people who are using statistics to drive their arguments. I even went a step further and stated hard figures.

If we're going to rely on a utilitarian metric for peace and human suffering, and use that metric to dismiss criticism of the status quo, what's the issue with using hard figures?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25279160

>for stating simple statistics

No you're deliberately calling out numbers that blows things out of proportion. 9/11 was deliberately used because it was a tragedy. Why didn't you compare COVID to car accidents which is the bigger more comparable number? Because you want to raise emotions. Don't pretend.

You're not a doomsday prophet but you are definitely manipulating the situation towards your own skewed perspective, you were dialing it up to 11, you're just back pedaling now.

If you indeed had something unbiased to say you would not have brought 9/11 out of nowhere to say that covid is like a bunch of 9/11s happening back to back because so is the flu so is car accidents. You have an agenda and you are promoting it with biased numbers.

> Well, I find it strange that people are easily triggered by reality, so much so that they want to drown it out, ignore it and think that those who are not content with the status quo should be "hit with a belt in the ass and told to stand in the corner", like the comment I replied to said.

Triggered by reality? Nobody is triggered here. We're saying calm down. You're the one that's bringing up 9/11 trying to trigger everyone.

Nobody is saying be content with the status quo, what we're saying is that don't push the panic button, we are not in a 9/11 panic situation... humanity is more at peace then ever before and the numbers show it when you look at the overall timeline of human existence.

I am saying that much of it should be drowned out though. All the news you've been inundated with 2 months ago is already outdated. You're loaded with an over dramatization of problems that humanity basically deals with on a normal basis and becomes useless and outdated within a week let alone a month.

It never was normal to see a neighbor dropping dead from the black death. Pandemics never were a normal state of affairs.

Right now many/most vehicle fatalities were people fully aware of the danger of those vehicles and willing to use them. And most "gun violence" fatalities were suicides (people willing to die). In contrast nearly nobody "accepts" to be exposed to a potentially deadly virus.

More people live in poverty now than ever before. The overall percentage may have decreased, but the sheer number is greater. Technically more people suffer now than ever in history. It doesn't matter that there's more. This is just an example of statistics hiding how bad things truly are.

The scale is greater now than it was back then. Now, a city of millions can be obliterated in an instant. Now, we can see the effects of global warming and how it can decimate the world's food supply.

We have more knowledge now than ever before - and before, ignorance was bliss.

>More people live in poverty now than ever before. The overall percentage may have decreased, but the sheer number is greater.

The sheer number doesn't matter when compared to the percentage. The percentage is the real number that measures our progress and the actual number is an illusion.

100 people die of car accidents per day does that mean we ban cars? No. The sheer number is an illusion the percentage is the real deal.

>The scale is greater now than it was back then. Now, a city of millions can be obliterated in an instant. Now, we can see the effects of global warming and how it can decimate the world's food supply.

Nobody is saying these aren't threats or problems. But compared with the past these problems are looming problems that we have to deal with as a society.

A peasant in the dark ages had to deal with starvation, black death or invaders. These were actual threats in the sense that an average conversation will be like: "Last week Martha got her head chopped off by a barbarian and Bob died of starvation. "

I get your point - but when we're talking about suffering, the amount matters. It doesn't matter if we reduce pollution if we're still causing global warming - things may be better, but that doesn't mean they're good enough.

> A peasant in the dark ages had to deal with starvation, black death or invaders. These were actual threats in the sense that an average conversation will be like: "Last week Martha got her head chopped off by a barbarian and Bob died of starvation. "

To even suggest starvation doesn't exist is...I don't even have the words.

Did you hear about the Nigerian farmers who were executed last week by Boko Haram? Not very different than a barbarian raiding a small village.

>To even suggest starvation doesn't exist is...I don't even have the words.

Stop over dramatizing the situation. Obviously I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm obviously not implying it.

What I am implying is that starvation is dramatically lower in percentage then it was in the past.

>Did you hear about the Nigerian farmers who were executed last week by Boko Haram? Not very different than a barbarian raiding a small village.

Again tragic but in the big scheme of things historically this would be something happening across the street from you. Nowadays it's happening in few places but you think it's a huge deal because the news manages to cover it.

No over dramatization - sorry if I struck a nerve with such an innocuous comment.

> What I am implying is that starvation is dramatically lower in percentage then it was in the past.

You aren't implying it. You're directly stating it. This isn't in debate, what's in debate is if, even if the percentage is better, more total suffer. Is that actually a moral good?

It's like saying "we've killed 90% of your cancer cells, but weren't able to kill all of them. The cancer will still kill you, but we killed a greater percentage of it! yay us!" It doesn't make sense in certain scenarios and is only helpful as a delta - plus, to even suggest that we have less poverty than ever in history is unsubstantiated with fact.

Well, it's all in the heads...

There's rich interaction between how the world is, how one perceives it and how you act on the beliefs you acquire.

And I agree, the technical data concerning (physical) violence, disease and wealth look good.

But that's not all there is to life, is it?

No, of course it's not all of life. But it's base factors. Kind of like basic survival situations. You need shelter, water and food. If you dont have that, you're chances of long term survival and/or happiness are close to zero. If you're under constant threat of physical harm, liable to get gravely sick and poor as a church mouse, your not going to have a good time either. It's easier to have a strong family, good friends and fulfilling hobbies and interests when the base 3 are at least stable, slightly leaning towards good. And of course I'm speaking generally, there are always exceptions, but to pretend exceptions are the norm isn't healthy either.

This argument that the world is more peaceful than ever is true... but it's true for a really bad reason. It's true because we have nukes. Full stop.

The reality is that we're staring down the barrel of not one, not two, not three, but potentially dozens of existential threats. The aforementioned nukes, climate change, environmental collapse, bioweapons, topsoil erosion... it's not an illusion created by the media. We're really not in good shape.

> This argument that the world is more peaceful than ever is true... but it's true for a really bad reason. It's true because we have nukes. Full stop.

Not really? Nukes only come into play with great power wars, and there's not really any fewer great power wars in the past century than the century before that. Post Napoleonic Wars, the only great power wars (in chronological order) are the Crimean War, Austro-Prussian War, Franco-Prussian War, World War I, Russian Revolution/Russian Civil War, and World War II, with the three 20th century wars all being far longer and more violent than the 19th century wars.

What has dropped down considerably is the lesser wars, be they localized conflicts such as the Ecuador-Peruvian War of 1941, civil wars such as the Spanish Civil War or American Civil War, wars between great powers and lesser powers such as the Russo-Japanese War, colonial wars such as the Boer War or the Indian Wars, revolutions such as the Revolutions of 1848. Of these, the only conflict that may have been avoided by nukes is an India/Pakistan conflict--note that Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons hasn't forestalled further conflicts with Arab countries (notably the Israel-Lebanon in my lifetime).

No not really. All countries have utilities to wage conventional war without going nuclear yet even with these utilities in place we are not waging war to the scale (in terms of %) as we did historically. The reason why there are less wars in the modern era is because there's no more tangible benefit in going to war.

In the old days going to war meant getting more plunder in your coffers. Things like gold and resources. Today wealth is stored in information, knowledge, know-how and expertise. Going to war doesn't necessarily grant you access to this kind of wealth. I can't transfer the expertise of how to fab a processor by invading silicon valley with soldiers.

War even runs the risk of destroying know-how and infrastructure related to technology. The way towards wealth in the modern era is through learning, communication and espionage.

You would think this kind of thing is obvious, that everyone should know that the spoils of war in the past when applied to the modern era are basically useless. But alas the complexities and blast of useless information delivered to us by the media makes it hard to pinpoint the fundamental reasoning.

No one is saying we don't have some serious problems. But it is the truth that this is objectively the best time to be alive as a human being.

A majority of people dont do bad deeds because they're "good hearted". They dont murder or steal because they're afraid of the consequences. Theres plenty of folks you want to punch in the face. Maybe once, twice or until they stop breathing. You lie to yourself that you dont do it because you're a good person. No, you're afraid they'll punch back, or their friends will intervene or assault charges. Or even better, you're too weak to cause consequential harm.

Yes nukes stopped a lot of potential wars. Good. If the mere existence is all that's needed to stop like half the wars that ever could be... and? Obviously I dont want them used. But wars happen and theres nothing anyone can do about that. Its human nature to be a bunch of cunts.

And there have always been a bunch of existential problems on the horizon. A decent reading of history shows that people have been fearful of whatever the latest fad of problems. The only real difference, in the last 100 years we are not at the complete and total mercy of nature. Only partially. It's only fairly recent that a drought here and there, blizzard, tornado, hurricane or volcano doesn't have epically large consequences in death toll. Those numbers are far less than they used to be.

Speaking solely to your first paragraph here, I've seen this sentiment expressed before, and it always strikes me as off in some way. I've not committed a lot of thought to the topic until recently, so apologies if my thoughts here are muddled or unclear.

I can pretty easily convince myself that a lot of what I'll call "smaller" bad deeds are primarily deterred by the threat of consequences: I never shoplifted a candy bar because it wasn't worth the perceived consequences. But I have a substantially harder time convincing myself that most people don't commit "grander" crimes largely because of a similar fear. Taking murder as the example and myself as a case study, I cannot fathom committing a murder because it feels wrong, there is a part of my mind that recoils at just the thought of it. Is that because the potential consequences of that act are ingrained into my psyche, or is there another reason? I'm inclined toward the latter, certainly. Not to mention that punishments geared toward deterrence often seem to not prevent murder from occurring.

I don't have any grand insights here, just sharing my observations on the topic, as it's come up surprisingly often recently in my experience on the internet.

So I do understand your viewpoint because I absolutely shared it in the past and at no point do I want you to think that I'm about to speak down at you. A lot of people have never been in a real life scenario to experience the actual decision process of doing "bad deeds". Which is actually good. The world is technically a better place because more and more people never have to experience the thought process first hand. However, they sometimes pretend they have, but they really haven't. I was in that field for quite a while.

First time parents find an issue with this too. People who figure they themselves are perfect angels incapable of harm, now have to care for their new little angel. An angel doesn't protect a weak little angel from the horrors of the world. What happens when someone abuses or abducts their child? Remember that Olympic physician who was touching all those underage girls? One of the fathers begged the judge for 5 min in a locked room with the guy. When denied, he still charged at the bastard in the courtroom. I bet you 100% that father would have always said he would never do such a thing prior to this event happening. We all lie that we are incapable or evil deeds. No, we need the right circumstances to ignore the consequences. We are afraid of retaliation until we no longer fear it for "good reasons". If you live a life where you never test those waters, hey that's a pretty good easy life. But theres something else to be said about understanding and accepting ones shadow prior hand so you dont go ballistic accidentally. I think the thought that you are incapable of evil is more dangerous than knowing you are capable of it. Because you never question if what you are doing is right or wrong if you are already biased that you can only do good.

Hey, thanks for engaging and no worries, nothing in your comment struck me as condescending.

I see your point here, and will grant that I've been fortunate to not have been in a situation in which I've had to consider anything approaching a "bad deed". Most of my thoughts on the subject are purely hypothetical, and informed by conversations with my dad, who has Seen Some Shit.

Looking back on the 2 times I can think of where I have considered striking someone to cause harm (both in middle and high school, a bully and a fight respectively), it seems to me that there is an element of considering consequences, but in neither circumstance were those consequences external. In both cases, it was very much a question of "am I going to feel bad about this later?", which prompted the question of justification rather than punishment. Perhaps at a certain level this is the same thing, but it seems at least qualitatively different to me, a kind of fear of my own judgment rather than that of another person. Would you generally consider this to be the same process, or not?

In either case, I can only wholeheartedly agree that perceiving oneself as incapable of evil is a Bad Idea. It seems dangerous to me for much the same reason you laid out, and I will occasionally attempt to engage in the kind of introspection necessary to grapple with what I might be capable of in a similar situation. I'm hesitant to say I'm incapable (psychologically) of doing something terrible in a similar situation, and my previous comment was from the reductionist point of view of a spherical murderer in a vacuum, as it were. Were I in that father's position, I know that I would feel _justified_ in taking that kind of action, which may prompt me to seek the opportunity, which is again where I see a slight difference from being prohibited solely by the fear of consequences, if that makes sense.

Again, thanks for taking the time to respond!

I'm similar to you but there are people who are very different. Psychopaths exist on the end of this spectrum but there are many people in between as it is a spectrum and can be measured physically and determined genetically. People not like us are much more common than you think.

I'd peg the number at 30-40% of people who are largely indifferent to murder and abide by the rules simply because of consequences society or habit. This is of course is just a anecdotal and hypothetical number.

The problem is when people judge humanity they instinctively reach for a mirror and believe that other people are a reflection. This is partly true but it causes people to miss many parts of the personality spectrum that are massively different.

Case in point:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien...

The above is an example of a psychopath who probably would have lived his life as a normal person were it not for his occupation and a serendipitous brain scan.

You will note that he has confirmed psychopathy through genetic evaluation and physical evaluation of the structure of his brain.

Also just want to say that I lied. I'm not like you. I'm a bit lower on the spectrum. I won't murder someone but if a stranger dies in front of me, I won't care. I'll definitely try to help him, but I won't be having problems sleeping at night.

Yeah, that's the mechanism I'm describing.

Droughts, storms and volcanoes are on a totally different scale than nuclear war, climate change, or topsoil erosion though. You could argue that we're in control of those problems, but I'm not holding my breath.

Not in control, we just aren't fully at their whim like we used to. We have advanced warning systems for storms. Systems that weren't even a fantasy prior to 1920. Now we have evacuation infrastructure, shelters, preparedness plans on huge scales. Perfect? By our standards, no. But perfect compared to folks who lived in the 1800s.

I get you think the world is fading away and there are problems left to solve. You are doing a great disservice to the giant's shoulders you stand on that have put in the effort and sacrifice that allow you to worry about this set of problems. They had far harsher problems with less tools than we have today.

I don't think that's true. They had relatively small-scale problems with huge, but narrowly distributed consequences. We have global-scale problems with huge, widely distributed consequences. It's great that we can predict storms and mitigate droughts... but that will not help if someone sets off an accidental nuclear exchange. That peasant from the 1800s and I are exactly equal in our ability to deal with that sort of problem.

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