Hacker News Reader

"It's possible that there is a constant decrease in standards, such that every generation is worse than the one before it. But I doubt it."

On the contrary, that has been my interpretation of these signals since I first started hearing them.

All living things (cats, societies, lizards, civilizations) are born, have an adolescence of growth and development, then decay and die.

So there must be some brief period in the adolescence of a civilization where "kids these days" cannot be applied. Society is growing, developing and integrating.

After that brief period it may then, indeed, be possible for each successive generation to correctly identify and decry the decay of their (society/civilization).

> When successive generations complain about "kids these days", there is a contradiction

It's not a contradiction, if each successive generation is more terrible than the one that came beforehand.

> It's not a contradiction, if each successive generation is more terrible than the one that came beforehand.

The OP considered this though, to quote: It's possible that there is a constant decrease in standards, such that every generation is worse than the one before it. But I doubt it. If such a steady decline had been happening since the 8th century BC civilization ought to have collapsed several times over.

> civilization ought to have collapsed several times over.

Which it did, in some ways.

> But I doubt it.

A contradiction leaves no doubt. It's not a contradiction then. A contradiction is not just something that is unlikely or infeasible, it is something impossible. It means that your set of beliefs is flawed and that at least one premise needs to be corrected for them to become consistent.

OldSecondHand is correct that it is possible for each generation to have been worse than the preceeding one. For example, the degradation might be so minute, or we may have started from such lofty heights, or the society has become more resilient to the degradation. It is possible, and therefore no contradiction. ...just unlikely.

>civilization ought to have collapsed several times over.

uhm, didn't it?

Yeah. A few times before the 8th century BC aswell.

To the point where we abandoned civilisation and became Hunter gatherers en masse? No. There have been ups and downs for individual kingdoms and empires but civilisation as a whole did alright since the 8th century BC, Socrates’ concerns about kids these days notwithstanding.

>To the point where we abandoned civilisation and became Hunter gatherers en masse

To the point of the fall or Athens and Greek empires, the fall of the hellenistic kingdoms, the fall of Rome, all the way to WWI and WWII, and that's just confined to the Western side of the world...

The fall of Rome was not "the collapse of civilization" and the Roman empire as a political entity never quite ceased existing seeing as how it continued in one form or another all the way up to the modern day by virtue of Istanbul still existing.

>When successive generations complain about "kids these days", there is a contradiction.

Not really. It's totally logically consistent if things are going downhill with each successive generation. (In fact, it would still be consistent if different things were going downhill, Gen 2 worse on X compared to Gen 1, and Gen 3 worse on Y compared to Gen 2, and so on). Whether that's the case it's another matter.

>It's possible that there is a constant decrease in standards, such that every generation is worse than the one before it.

Exactly.

>But I doubt it.

I wouldn't be so sure.

Note also that since there are no permanent eternal standards standing outside of history, each generation only has to be worse by the standards of its previous generation, for the accusation to be true...

>kids these days in the UK drink less than their parents did at that age, but they don't get any credit for it

Illegal narcotics would like a word.

> When successive generations complain about "kids these days", there is a contradiction.

There is absolutely no contradiction, because in fact they are complaining about different things. Sometimes they are complaining about kids being more violent then they used to be. Other times they are complaining about kids being more rude, more passive, more drinking. Then they complain about kids dont more sport, less sport, reading too much, not reading enough.

If you abstract it away to "kids are bad", then yes, it sounds as if the complain was constantly the same. But that abstraction is manipulative.

> Tellingly, no one ever says "kids these days are much better behaved than we were as kids", even when it's empirically true.

I have in fact said that multiple times. The "no one ever says" part is not true either.

Yes, people are more likely to comment on negatives that affect them then on positives. That is true about literally anything, including software updates. And that still does not imply that every complain about bad software update should be shut down.