The book [factfulness](<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness</a>) is precisely about this. They present how the world is improving in an irrefutable way but media and politicians would only focus on the negative. The authors are Swedish, so they talk first hand about Sweden, and their experiences how drastically Sweden changed in the last 2 generations is amazing
Fun fact: Our World in Data is a YC funded non-profit<p><a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/our-world-in-data">https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/our-world-in-data</a>
Good article. I agree with the sentiment. It is easy to be pessimistic, and it is dangerous to be complacent. Recognizing that progress is occurring should motivate future actions, whereas believing the world is inevitably getting worse, or that it will get better on its own, can lead one to give up or withdraw from the world.<p>I caveat this praise with my now instinctive skepticism of all of these EA projects coming out of Oxford. It feels like an overfunded set of charities.
> Clearly, a world where thousands of tragedies happen every single day is awful.<p>Here I will take the heartless position and say that it is not clear to me that this statement is true. I certainly agree that it's a tragedy for the people involved. But if 4.4% of children dying before age 15 means that the world is an awful place, at what point would that stop being true? 2.2%? 1E-10%? I don't think the world is an awful place, I think it's a good place, getting better in some ways, with a long way to go in many others.
Related:<p><i>The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32173146">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32173146</a> - July 2022 (121 comments)
One day we’ll collectively realize how damaging constant access to “news” (in the modern day, engagement-optimized despair/outrage/fear porn) is on our mental health. Until then we’ll never be able to square the circle of how things can be so bad while our actual immediate lives are perfectly fine
As an aside to this, I am reminded of paraconsistent logic systems [1] and three valued logic [2].<p>One quote I like from the three valued logic system, referencing Charles Sanders Peirce, states:<p>> Peirce soundly rejected the idea all propositions must be either true or false; boundary-propositions, he writes, are "at the limit between P and not P."<p>I also recall reading some description of Buddhist or Advaita Vedanta where logical systems that rejected the law of non-contradiction were explored. I can't find the exact reference, but I recall it was related to the Two Truths doctrine which leads me to believe it was explored by Nagarjuna.<p>At any rate, the idea that two contradictory things can be true simultaneously is a very interesting area to explore.<p>Edit: To add to the link list: Dialetheism [4] is the view that there are statements that are both true and false<p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic</a><p>2. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-valued_logic" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-valued_logic</a><p>3. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine</a><p>4. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialetheism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialetheism</a>
The world on big measures is going better than it has. I am constantly annoyed there are too many in power slowing process to actually do better. If we all wanted it to be better to avoid preventable deaths and disability we could make progress a lot faster than we do.
Solving the Malaria and vitamin A deficiency is noble, I suppose, but only addresses the underlying condition of death.<p>O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
I do recommend David Byrne's Reasons to be Cheerful <a href="https://reasonstobecheerful.world/" rel="nofollow">https://reasonstobecheerful.world/</a> a project that 'aims to inspire us all to be curious about how the world can be better, and to ask ourselves how we can be part of that change'.
From my perspective, global warming is the overriding problem, because time is running out to stop it. Maybe time has already run out, and it's too late to prevent the terrible consequences.<p>In terms of other social problems, the world has gotten better in many respects, and it could continue to get better over time... given unlimited time. I'm just not sure that we have unlimited time. Wrecking our own ecosystem makes it very difficult to make progress on anything else, and the consequences of wrecking our ecosystem will only aggravate our other problems. That's why I'm overall pessimistic.
>It is wrong to think these three statements contradict each other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better world is possible.<p>I'll disagree with all of that. Awful, better, and improving are all measured differently, however these observations will push, pull, and merge with other observations. Quality of life is not so clean that we can dismiss any part of it as trivial.
These are contradictory statements because they are politically loaded. The "things are alright, and are getting better, but we can do even better" party doesn't energize people, and no one wants to be that party, even if it accurately describes things.
100% of children would die. The world was awful, is awful and continue to be awful. We bring sentient beings to life to only subject them to the inevitable death.
When people focus on the positives, they aren't doing so to negate the negatives. They are doing so because many people are just factually wrong about things, like saying life was better in the 50s or something, which is just objectively false. One of the best ways to strive forward is optimism of the future and optimism about how far we've come; looking and longing for the past is not a great way to move forward or solve problems. That's one thing I didn't care about the opening statement. Sort of missed that point.
The world is awful. Millions of children die each year.<p>The world is much better. Even though children die, we don't have nearly as many as we used to.<p>The world can be much better. Most of these child deaths are preventable.<p>This is how I view the world and it is why it upsets me when people voice concern about crime in a city or something like that and people respond with "ACKSHUALLY" followed by some sort of statistic. It feels like people just want to stay stuck but as the author says "to see that a better world is possible, we need to see that both are true at the same time: the world is awful, and the world is much better."<p>Being too dismissive of certain concerns is just as bad as being too pessimistic.
The world will end in a technologically enabled autocracy, with private robot armies controlled by the elites that enslave humanity and cull the population.<p>Democracy will be obsolete soon once mass media and social media can manipulate people at will, via AI agents of misinformation.<p>Technology augments individuals and given sufficient augmentation, the power of one individual will be larger than the power of millions. This is already the case economically and politically, and that will soon be the case militarily.
"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better"<p>- Laurie Anderson, "Language Is a Virus from Outer Space"
Demagogues on the right, left, and along every axis make a living by shining a light on one of these and leaving others in darkness. We buy it because it's easy to pick a side when you're only looking at one angle, and easy feels better.<p>The people who can see that we've got room for improvement without poo-pooing the gains that we've made are the best sort of people. Sadly that's the center and the center has a hard time keeping hold of most people's minds.
It is bad because I have a loan.
It was worse because I had no money.
It can be better because I could repay the loans.
...
It is going to be a disaster but let my grandchildren worry about it.
This is what shielded first world upper class tell themselves to not feel guilty, and at the same time to make sure that no actual change threatening the status quo that keeps them well fed happens too fast.<p>You never hear someone struggling to pay rent or to buy groceries tell you "God bless we have it so much better than 150 years ago". Guess why?
I wonder how my children will live in this much better world where the climate is collapsing, a global war is looming, the spectre of unemployment due to automation is everywhere, surveillance will soon be unescapable with every person having a personal llm agent checking them, inequality soaring and so on.
Eh who cares, my genes tell me they must move forward so uhh sucks for my kids I guess
Tao Te Ching 29, Stephen Mitchell<p>Do you want to improve the world?<p>I don’t think it can be done.<p>The world is sacred.<p>It can’t be improved.<p>If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.
The world is not awful. The world just is.<p>It's just humans create environment they don't understand and can't handle, and it takes them a lot of time and effort to even somehow organise it on a small piece of a land. And then it ruins, and then they construct it again, and cetera.
Our World in Data is a thinktank touting the same old progressivist agenda that's keeping us from solving climate change through degrowth.<p>Case in point, they've released a blog post saying that carbon dioxide pollution is beginning to decouple from GDP growth, which is only weakly happening in a handful of countries with lots of alternative energy sources, and this is only because they haven't accounted all pollution due to consumption.
The part of 4.4% children worldwide die vs. in the European Union 0.47% of all children die forgets to mention that the EU has much, much fewer children (comparatively speaking, as in children per women) compared to the places where child mortality rate is still (comparatively) high, i.e. places like Central and East Africa.<p>Which is to say that were we to really want to make Africa reach European levels of (lower) child mortality that would also mean that the same Africa will start have much fewer children, at the same levels Europe is right now, which, adding it all up, means that we will end up having fewer children as a whole (for our entire planet, that is). Which means that this policy of trying to make the world "better" would end up actually making it worst, that is it will make us (the human species) have (much) fewer children in the future.