
Is the world really better than ever? - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/jul/28/is-the-world-really-better-than-ever-the-new-optimists
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rafiki6
In the book Sapiens, the author makes a rather well researched and convincing
argument that humans truly had their best times as hunter/gatherers. Generally
if you were part of a tribe, you ate and survived and likely even reproduced.
You were probably physically in decent shape but you were at the mercy of
things like, larger predators, weather and disease. Humanity as a whole is
CURRENTLY at their most prosperous, but for an individual human today whether
or not you are better off is very very dependent on where you live. We live in
a bubble in the West. And statistics are misleading to the plight of those not
living in cosy, developed resource hungry nations. Further, we really need to
work hard to maintain what we have. We need to reduce our population,
depletion of resource and carbon footprint to not screw it up what's good. The
questions is not whether the earth can support more humans, but if humanity
NEEDS more humans to continue prospering. If we are to survive as a race and
continue to prosper, our greatest innovations, whether or social or
technological, will be around using less or being more efficient in deploying
what we have.

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nemild
If you're interested in this topic, I did lots of data analysis to show the
nature of the skew in death coverage vs actual deaths in the New York Times:

[https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html](https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html)

[https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-
films.html](https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html)

My own view is that much of the mismatch between coverage and reality can be
explained by media economics, where reader interest and media incentives
encourage the coverage of extreme events. And while my data focuses on
traditional media, I wouldn't be surprised if social media has a much greater
skew.

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shishy
I'd recommend the book The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker. The
article reminded me of it, but Pinker demonstrates why violence in our society
has decreased over time (even though many people would intuitively think it's
the opposite).

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JacksonGariety
It's always fascinating to me that when this question comes up (are we going
downhill or uphill?) the answer inevitably turns to violence. Is violence the
pinnacle of evil? Is nothing worse than violence? What about mental illness?
Isolation? Separation from your family? Lack of meaningful cultural practices?

