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Comment by aaaronic | Hacker News Reader

I think you hit the nail on the head there with the survivorship bias and the raised in a bubble comments. Most people are raised in a bubble because children generally can't cope with how messy and complicated the world is. And systems and companies that last a long time can point to how successful they were because of their good decisions while ignoring their equally bad decisions that really should have undone them had they not been lucky.

The older I get, the more I realize how fragile a lot of human systems really are, but I suspect it has always been this way and it won't change significantly any time in my lifetime.

Your comment itself sound somewhat nihilistic, so I hope you're doing well mentally!

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>The older I get, the more I realize how fragile a lot of human systems really are, but I suspect it has always been this way and it won't change significantly any time in my lifetime

I agree that human systems have always been fragile, but have long been papered-over by things like "decency", "tradition" and "doing the right thing" and in extreme cases, mobs with pitch-forks.

I disagree that it won't change in our lifetime(s) - the extreme polarization and tribal politics will get worse and people will let systems break - or intentionally break systems just so that their team will gain a short-term win. I have no idea what new horror it will take to remind people to be decent to each other again, but looking back at how divisive COVID-19 was, I'm not hopeful.

I took the prior post as in, "the fact that they are fragile won't change", not that the systems themselves won't change. And I would agree with that---I see it as yet another expression of the human condition. We may try to build order over chaos to make society, but we also keep loopholes and wiggle room for our psyches. I think the fragility of human systems emerges from that contradiction.

Students of history and the arts can get an earlier exposure to this worldview. I think we engineering types can get too focused on technology and imagine everything is innovation and progress. You have to work uphill against your default interests to expose yourself to a longer view and consider that fundamentally modern people with modern minds lived for (many) thousands of years doing almost all the same cognitive things as us, just with different physical props.

Our lungs are constantly in flux as we breathe. But at the same time, we're just breathing and that doesn't really change until our end. I'd say human social systems are much like that.

Yeah, I was really going for something like "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

Thanks for the concern, but I'm all right, I have the privilege of living near the top of Maslow's hierarchy and actually pondering these questions. :) If I'm a nihilist I'm at the "creating your own value system" part. The world is generally a giant blob of apathetic flavorless jello, I can at least inject some sugar and food coloring wherever I'm at. There's also some freedom in that, when people don't care they also tend to give way pretty easily. It's just disappointing, except for when you encounter that rare person that also gives a shit. Part of the reason I spend a lot more time on HN than reddit. :)

Good to hear you're doing relatively well, and I agree that injecting positivity where you can is probably one of the sanest ways to live.

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