Hacker News Reader

Comment by RapperWhoMadeIt | Hacker News Reader

As someone who grew up and continues to live between a Western European country and a developing country in the so-called "third world", I have been intensely thinking lately about how "relative" our sensations and experiences are. In one of the countries, people get really mad and their days get spoiled because a train arrives 5 minutes too late, on the other side of the globe, people have never experienced such a good train service and they wouldn't mind arriving 5 minutes too late, they would be intensely grateful for being able to get such a cheap, safe and comfortable transport service. To name one of too many such examples.

I find it so difficult to relate to such "first world problems" lately...

View on HN

> people get really mad and their days get spoiled because a train arrives 5 minutes too late

A state of affairs immortalized in the famous sentence "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy".

I think peoole seem happy but just like to complain. My theory isnit is some evolutionary thing to help the tribe spread news of potential survival problems so they can be delt with. Our brains have not caught up with modern life is all.

The difference between what is and what can be is the space from which all human achievement stems.

Also the space from which all human unhappiness stems, FWIW.

Nobody really cares if a train is on-time. They care about the consequences of being late wherever it is they have to go. If transportation is generally unreliable across an entire country, then appointment times will be lax, nobody will be fired for being a few minutes late, your date won't decide they don't like you, etc. It's all about the surrounding expectations and how other people will treat you because of them. If Western European countries also had a culture of no hard timelines and schedules only being suggestions, then people who lived there wouldn't get stressed over a late train.

You are entirely missing the point. Yes, sure, there are examples in which there might be consequences if the train is not on-time. But a lot of the time I see people literally stressing out about a train being late for no reason whatsoever, because they don't have any stakes on that train arriving on-time. Lots of my colleagues don't really have to be at work at a particular time, our working ours are completely flexible every day. But they will always complain extensively if their trains get minimally delayed.

So what are they getting so mad about? Because they are "losing" 5 minutes of their precious time being idle in a train station? I guess those 5 minutes would have been quite remarkable if they could have been replying to emails at their desk. As I said, there were no negative consequences whatsoever for those guys if the train arrives late. They have just lost all sense of rationality and want to be mad for the sake of being mad about something "not working as expected or intended".

I experienced this at heightened levels while watching this video last night:

https://youtu.be/8NTIY8Qy2f0

watching a video doesn't make you experience it

Don’t worry, Meta is solving this one

And in other news, the Pope is a Catholic

But getting used to the comfort is very quick. Introduce that train service in the "3rd world" country and it will probably take few days to see the complaints over a "later than normal" train.

As a person who moved abroad from a 3rd world country, I can relate. I sometimes think about how it would be like to move some of this 1st world people to the other side of the globe to show them how people are living their lives, without all those comfort. I wonder if their life would change afterwards.

Humans like progress and improvements.

If delays are reduced from 4 hours to 2 hours, people are happy.

If delays increase from 5 minutes to 10 minutes, people are unhappy.

It's human nature, it's what drives us to always do better.

Spending time in a developing country as a Westerner really can temper the inanity of First World Problems. It's a true blessing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com