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Comment by TeaBrain | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a lazy response to something that isn't a very good example of rosy retrospection. The rates of all of the things the parent mentioned do happen to have decreased. Studies have also been done on the relative freedom of movement that adolescents have been allowed, going back several generations, and there has been a marked decrease. The below link is to a paper on this phenomenon occurring in England.

"Decreasing experiences of home range, outdoor spaces, activities and companions":

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/94588/1/Woolley%2520and%2520...

Article covering another more recent study, called "Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Wellbeing", on this occurring in the US:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230309101330.h...

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i grant you lazy response, and raise you another: the articles you cite are likely more rosy retrospection themselves. none of anything being discussed here is, in my opinion, reliably nor convincingly quantifiable.

Rosy retrospection of what? I think you're just repeatedly invoking the term inappropriately. The first link is to an article on home range, which obviously has nothing to do with rosy retrospection, had you even bothered to glance at it.

Is the fact that suicide rates in the US have been rising steadily over the last two decades and are now at the highest point in the last 80 years also rosy retrospection?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/29/2022-suic...

> Rosy retrospection of what? I think you're just repeatedly invoking the term inappropriately.

don't be daft.

> Is the fact that suicide rates in the US have been rising steadily over the last two decades and are now at the highest point in the last 80 years also rosy retrospection?

i'll attempt to make my position clear one final time: i don't accept any of your premises as fact. not about the reason/s behind rates of suicide (who that's actually committed suicide can tell us why they did?), nor the statistical measurement thereof for that matter. not about rates of homework assignment nor "home range" nor "relative freedom of movement" nor the degree of parenting... intensity? none of it.

again, these 'phenomena', let's call them for the sake of argument, in my opinion, are not convincingly nor reliably quantifiable. you are also entitled to your own opinion, whether based on the opinions of others or conceived of yourself. but we should be careful when branding something as fact just because someone else has assigned some contrived numbers to their own unprovable opinion.

Your first response is ironic considering that the first article that I posted didn't take a position on how the past was relatively better, yet you referred to both as being "rosy retrospection", which doesn't make any sense, since that article is not taking a side that the past was better, but only showed that successive generations of children in an area had progressively smaller ranges that they were allowed to wander from the home. This is precisely why I asked, since it makes absolutely no sense to call it "rosy retrospective", yet you lazily blanketed both articles with the term, showing that you obviously didn't look at either. I wanted to see if you were able to provide a direct response to as to why you made your assertion on at least one article, but you instead again just made lazy generalizations that don't have anything to do with the articles I posted.

Your example premise of "the reasons for suicide", is not something I ever proposed. I never attempted to explain the reason for the increase. I simply posted an article showing that the suicide rate has increased over the last couple decades, since you kept blanketing everything prior as "rosy retrospection". Do you not believe that the suicide rate has increased over the last two decades?

"The suicide rate per 100,000 people in 2022 was 14.3, according to a report from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention released early Wednesday. The rate was 15 in 1941."[0]

> Do you not believe that the suicide rate has increased over the last two decades?

per capita (assuming that's what you mean), that's correct. i do not.

we should stop now. very unproductive exchange.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40779141, citing https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/29/2022-suic...

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