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Comment by nickpp | Hacker News Reader

I miss spending time in the evenings as a child with my grandparents at candle light, before electricity got brought to their remote village. They told us stories, we watched the flame flicker and we sang. It was a simpler, smaller world. But our modern world is an undeniable better one - they were the first to acknowledge, when they were still alive.

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I don't get it. These things are all still possible to do. It's just the less preferred thing to do.

Of course. They're not around anymore though, so...

I found out recently Switzerland doesn't use European SIM cards. Had WiFi in the rental, but as soon as we started walking around Luzern we were text message only. The experience was kind of like turning off the TV that's on all the time. Everything got quiet and I became more aware of the people I was with. I guess I can just turn my phone off, or turn data off, but so long as I have to WANT to do it, I wont. And that's maybe as human a conclusion I can draw. Candle light and wood smoke still exist, but unless we're kinda forced towards them, we'll always go towards the bright lights and warmer rooms.

> But ours is an undeniable better one.

Is it? Honestly, global trade/capitalism has ravaged our planet - we have a fire season nearly everywhere now, ocean acidification/plastic gyre. The same engine that can give us global wireless broadband has polluted our planet beyond restoration.

Yes, medicine and technology is arguably better for most but increasing income inequality is making everything less available to all.

I would urge you to confirm your priors on whether the concept of "ongoing progress" is a state of nature, or a belief system.

Stop consuming the news so much and you'll realize the world is not anywhere as bad as the pundits would want you to believe.

I don't think that's fair, it's entirely dependant on where the person you're replying to lives.

Life quality in cities is still improving, assuming one can afford it. In more rural areas, often simultaneously subject to all kinds of attacks on nature and a lack of opportunities and essential services, I'm not so convinced...

Never in our civilisation history have we had so much available to so many.

Yes, nature and the planet are in a worse state but the humanity is in a much better one. And I am confident with time and technology we will improve them both. The engine of progress has already solved much harder problems than the current ones.

> The engine of progress has already solved much harder problems than the current ones.

I suspect the harder problems you're thinking of are all technological. The current ones we are facing are social and political more than anything, so I don't share your optimism...

Yes, there is a danger there, and it wasn't always an easy path, but anti-tech movements were always around. Call them luddites, de-growth, doomers, anti-tech, anti-nuclear greens, anti-development (or their e economic equivalent: anti-capitalists, marxists and communists) - historically they always lost to progress.

Humanity is huge and diverse - if a group of people decides to stop evolving and stagnate, another will gladly steal their place.

> historically they always lost to progress

What you call "progress" is what led us here. Remains to be seen if "here" is a trap. You seem to think that everything is fine since everything will be fine, but that opinion doesn't have a consensus right now. I prefer to remain more doubtful.

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