We might make judgments to this end that misalign with our values or misunderstand the data, but that doesn't mean a judgment like "the world is getting worse" will ever be wrong. It will always true in some respects and not true in other respects.
When someone says the "world is worse", I automatically know they mean a value judgment "for them" or "for humans" or "for animals" and not some scientific, objective measure on the "Planet Earth Goodness Scale".
A valid criticism in this case is that they are clearly valuing humans above other species because the world is objectively worse for the Rusty-patched bumble bee, to pick an example, which is critically endangered.
Many, maybe even the majority, of people would agree with him because, well, we're humans.
So, in this threads context, once people have the "facts", they ALSO agree that the world is better, not worse.
I guess the point is; "this is value based" is a truism.
>Child mortality, childbirth death decrease >Child labor. >Life expectency >Literacy increase >Smoking decrease
For others, there's possibly quite a large room for cherry-picking data. I'm very happy if the following can be proved to be negligible ( or wrong ):
>Extreme poverty falling I'm not sure how the math ($1) can already be an adjusted for inflation / price variances. Probably should be using the income / wealth equality instead.
>People in developed countries have more leisure time But not in developing countries. Following the links, I find our working levels stay pretty much the same above the 2000h line. Also I'm interested in how much we compare to pre-industrial level.
>Smoking is down, but not so much in developing countries >Homicide rates have fallen dramatically, but only counting US and EU >The share of income spent on food has plummeted in the US No mention of developing countries. World-wide the homicide rates looks to be about the same-ish ?.
>People have been getting taller for centuries There are more to nutrition than height, and world-wide looks like it has been same-ish since 1970.
>More people in the world live in a democracy now 50/50 on this one, mainly cause I'm not sure if the democracy index is measured objectively, or they just extend to whatever countries on good terms with the US.
>Tech & Moore's law I'm skeptic of more tech leads == better life, particularly when more people reported more internet time ~= decreased mental health.
In the United States, however, things have been going somewhat backwards since the mid 70's. The millennial generation is poorer than their parents were at the same age. Civil rights are beginning to get rolled back. The political situation is fraught.
There are also, as others have pointed out, a number of red flashing danger signs coming from the environment. The earth is limited, and we're treating it as if it's infinite.
So, from my point of view, here, the "world is getting worse" belief has some justification.
> A commonly-held lay public perception holds that the world is in terrible shape; for some, 2016 was the "worst year ever" and the year that liberalism died. In contrast, Pinker argues that life has been getting better for most people. He sets out 15 different measures of human wellbeing to support this argument, with the most obvious being the uncontroversial fact that, statistically, people live longer and healthier lives on average than ever before.
> It argues that the Enlightenment values of reason, science, and humanism have brought progress; shows our progress with data that health, prosperity, safety, peace, and happiness have tended to rise worldwide; and explains the cognitive science of why this progress should be appreciated.