If you haven't noticed, advanced economies are experiencing secularly stagnating growth, a crisis of democratic representation and its populist backlash, the return of oligarchic inequality to levels not seen since the gilded age, and extreme social atomisation and mental health breakdown.
We are also all hurtling towards catastrophic climate change, an AI revolution that could lead to generalised technological unemployment, and some indeterminate level of conflict between the US and China.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, most people in advanced economies look back on the post-war decades as a golden age - obviously there were problems, but there was high growth, full employment, good public services, strong unions, and comparatively cheap housing. Others look back to the 1990s as a time of untroubled horizons.
Also, the global 'we' is unhelpful. Have native Americans, Syrians or Greeks never had it so good?
> Also, the global 'we' is unhelpful. Have native Americans, Syrians or Greeks never had it so good?
Syrians are starving and in war, so they've been better. The other two examples, undoubtedly yes they are better than ever. For anyone to think it was better in any other time in history for most of the global population than now, shows such a lack of knowledge of history and the human condition that its hard to take serious. For someone so concerned with the future of humanity to create a problem with referring to all humans as "we" is a bit rich.
Scrolling instagram and fake depressions aren't worse than having 7 miscarriages, half your kids dying as babies or children, being enslaved, starving to death and a million other nice things most humans had to deal with that they don't have to deal with now. Basic access to medicine, food stability etc, on a large scale is so much better. We have the fewest people living in poverty there ever was.
Wanting to better ourselves and being aware the Maslow hierarchy continues to create infinite steps should not blind you to the amount of work millions of humans over generations have done to create such an easy mode version of the world for us. To not at least acknowledge it and just say it all sucks is myopic at the minimum.
Read the first sentence with which I began. I said it was simplistic, not that it was categorically and completely wrong, and certainly not that its opposite was true.
What I object to is the extraordinarily simplistic, one-dimensional view of progress peddled by the likes of Hans Rosling and Steven Pinker.
True, lot's of material and medical indicators of progress have consistently increased. That's to be celebrated. Certainly, if asked, the vast majority of people in the West would want to be born in the post-war years, and the average would probably slant towards the end of that period. Though I do think a good slice of people would choose against the post-2008 years in particular.
But that binary - better or worse? - is a crude measure of societal health. It lacks any dialectical sense of modernity, of that fact the same socio-technological expansion which brought about that progress, has gone hand-in-hand with extreme oligarchy, world war, nuclear weapons, climate change, the anthropocene. Certainly, the risks of catastrophic global breakdown are greater today than ever before.
I also think it has a superficial and philistine grasp of politics and the common good. Besides utilitarians, few political philosophers would so easily equate the good with material abundance. Hence why I pointed, by way of counterpoint, to today's secular stagnation, crisis of democracy, inequality, and withering of public life. These are not small problems, but speak to fundamental pathologies in our body politic.
> "The other two examples, undoubtedly yes they are better than ever."
Many native Americans and Greeks would viscerally disagree with you. Perhaps you're missing something?
> "For anyone to think it was better in any other time in history for most of the global population than now, shows such a lack of knowledge of history and the human condition that its hard to take serious."
As above, you have misread what I said, and I think trying to understand and evaluate society solely from the binary standard of 'better or worse' is extremely crude. I have a PhD in history btw.
>"Scrolling instagram and fake depressions aren't worse than having 7 miscarriages, half your kids dying as babies or children, being enslaved, starving to death."
True, but I think virtually no one would say otherwise. This is an unhelpful caricature of the argument I was making.
If you think being able to take all variables you can into account and have your model spit out "better" or "worse" is crude, than you can't be asked anything cause any answer to anything is crude.
The question is simple, given any century throughout history, would a person prefer to be born in 2000 or any century before then, not knowing anything else about their life, where they will be born, who their parents are etc. I'm pretty sure a rational person will always choose 2000 as of today if they are choosing actually thinking of the consequences and not just "I wanna cosplay as a cowboy".
If you don't think you can answer that question you don't have any knowledge. You fell into the trap of "I learned how much I didn't know and now think nothing can be answered because everything is complex" which is a trap some people fall into. At some point laws need to be written and you need answers. What is simplistic to me is saying "aw chucks it's too complex, nobody knows if it's better because for one person over there it's worse". Even complex systems have answers at the end, said another way, whatever the distribution or long tails or whatever, I can still calculate a median. You should "roll up" your knowledge into being able to still answer "yes" or "no" to something. And the answer is yes, the world is better to live in today, regardless of how much hand waving you do about specific subsets of people or caring about 2008 till now vs before as if that realistically mattered on a large scale of centuries of human existence.
It's also funny how its crude when I say it's better for everyone but it's not crude when you say it's worse for Greek people. Also still trying to understand if you think the financial crisis has anything on medieval medical practices and lack of food and societal support systems. I was poor in portugal during that period so pretty much went through the same as the Greeks and let me tell you I'd rather be poor in the 2000s than rich anywhere on earth in the 1400s.
>"If you think being able to take all variables you can into account and have your model spit out "better" or "worse" is crude, than you can't be asked anything cause any answer to anything is crude."
That doesn't follow logically at all!?
Trying to reduce human history down to a summative, categorical and dichotomous judgement of '-1' or '+1' is outrageously simplistic, almost by strict definition. Incidentally, precisely this observation is baked into common idioms, like 'black and white thinking', and Manichean 'good versus evil'.
You also seen to be taking an incongruently natural scientific approach to what is a largely a meta-ethical and historical question - two fields with their own, distinctive methodologies.
I don't think this conversation has been particularly constructive, so let's wish one another the best and park it.
The logic implication is that everything is complex :)
Anyway yeah lets park it. I think you should reflect on being able to reduce complex problems to practical answers and I should reflect on not over-simplifying complex topics and if we both do that this conversation is not a waste of time. Hopefully we agree at least on that. Otherwise have a great day!
>If you haven't noticed, advanced economies are experiencing secularly stagnating growth
Is growth really what we should care about though? Would you prefer to live in a poor society that's growing rapidly, or a rich society that's stagnating? In terms of your quality of life (medical, food, housing, education, etc.) you're going to have a better time in the stagnant-but-rich society.
Opportunity and poor, growing countries turn into rich countries within a human lifespan and then don't usually stagnate for another generation or two.
> If you haven't noticed, advanced economies are experiencing secularly stagnating growth,
I haven't noticed that. The US is currently in a boom, and unemployment across the rich world is mostly at record lows.
> a crisis of democratic representation and its populist backlash,
Not sure what you mean there? Are you talking about US politics?
> the return of oligarchic inequality to levels not seen since the gilded age,
Global inequality has gone down considerably in the last few decades. Not sure what you are talking about.
> Unsurprisingly, therefore, most people in advanced economies look back on the post-war decades as a golden age - obviously there were problems, but there was high growth, full employment, good public services, strong unions, and comparatively cheap housing. Others look back to the 1990s as a time of untroubled horizons.
Those 'glorious' post-war years were when global inequality really took off. It's taken the rapid progress of the last few decades to partially undo the damage.
But openness about mental health issues and lower stigma around it is definitely a more modern thing, actually. I don't doubt that some subsets of the population got more depressed while others feel better, but it's very possible that rates would have been the same 30 years ago, had people felt okay with talking about suicidal thoughts, depression or a variety of other things that are at least a bit less stigmatised now. I'm not that old (or at least I like to think I'm not) but I can say with confidence nobody in my circle of friends 25 years ago would even think of saying they're depressed or suicidal. That would get you labelled a weirdo.
Oh, I agreed with you, I just feel like any blunt accusation of "Wrong" really deserves some data along with it.
I don't know how to solve this problem, either. Covid seems to have only caused all of us to double down on the social isolation that was already introduced by computing/the internet somehow.
As soon as my kid is a little older (he's 2.3 years old and still extremely high-maintenance currently), my partner and I will try to get back to what we used to do and throw more dinner parties/social events.
Does COVID still exist meaningfully in your part of the world?
In my country the first few waves were very strong, but after a successful vaccination campaign (among other things) COVID has completely disappeared in everybody’s daily lives.
I think they are referring less to the actual virus and more to the rapid deterioration of our discourse and politics that accompanied it. Or at least this is what I might mean when using "COVID" as an epoch.
> rapid deterioration of our discourse and politics that accompanied it
That has been happening way before Covid.
IMHO it started with the internet. Pre-internet the flow of information is gatekept by traditional media - newspapers, radio, TV, … etc. Everyone watched, listened to, read more or less the same things. This resulted in a more uniform set of opinions and more common ground between people.
The internet broke all that. People could choose what they watch/listen/read and different people picked different things, coming to very different conclusions. In the past you could ask someone if they watched X last night and there is a decent probability they did. Today it’s much harder to find common ground - you could both be on YouTube but watching completely different things.
Edit: Don’t just downvote. You got a problem with this post, say something.
I agree it was happening before COVID. I think the internet could be part of the problem. But it wasn’t freedom of choice that caused the problem, which is what you claim. There’s much less freedom on the internet now, and if anything it’s much worse. If we’re going to blame internet then blame ads and big tech. Don’t blame people for watching cat videos, that’s absurd.
I’m not blaming anything. But it’s my theory that whatever consensus we enjoyed in the past was due to the information landscape of the time - where information was controlled and curated by a dozen or so centralized entities and their affiliates.
The internet though is mostly chaos. There are gatekeepers, e.g. Google, but they don’t curate much - using a blacklist approach rather than whitelist - and instead just organize the information making it findable.
Niche ideas get air time and now compete in the market place of ideas.
What does the data look like in your country? England had 273 deaths and 3000 hospital admissions in the past week. It's still there, bubbling along in the background, it's just not getting media attention.
A teammate caught Covid this week, and they're now isolating.
Another teammate's family caught Covid last week.
Me and my wife caught Covid in August.
We're all vaccinated afaik (myself with 5 jabs), and thankfully we only got mild symptoms, but the problem with Covid is how easy it is for it to spread.
Do people in your life do a rapid test when they get sick? The only explanation I see for thinking that Covid has "disappeared", is that barely anyone still tests.
> You see, covid is NOT really a respiratory illness. Researchers at Oxford University call it a “Serious Vascular Disease with Primary Symptoms of a Respiratory Ailment”. So, you need to stop comparing it to colds and flus. No cold killed 30,000+ Americans in less than two months in 2023. Covid did so in January and February. So, please stop comparing them.
One thing that (by skimming again) both articles don't touch is: excess deaths.
I've seen people suggest that we're "past it", because the excess deaths (compared to 2 years before) are now subsiding... While ignoring the fact that excess deaths compared to 2 year before are comparing against when the first few COVID spikes happened (and we didn't have vaccines, so mortality was even higher).
We need to compare our society excess mortality to 2019 (and/or average of years preceding 2020), for the foreseeable future :/
That said, I'm not spending 100% of my day worrying about COVID, and I don't take as many precautions as I could... I wear FFP2 masks in public transport, but I usually don't bother in the office, for example
I'm on 0 jabs (apparently they don't slow transmission or virality, so I figured I wouldn't bother) and long covid is still really rough. A few things helped me get through long covid: surprisingly, nicotine and a lot of natural carbs from fresh ripe fruits. And by an excess, I mean 200+ grams a day by macro. It took me a month or two of nicotine gum, about 100lbs of fruit (12.5lbs a week) and so much sleep, but I'm starting to do better.
long covid is not something you can combat with fresh fruits, it can cause a life long disability, brain damage and more. it's quite obvious an anti-vaxxer would try to dismiss it as a "sucks but you can make it through". Look up the stories of people who still can barely get out of bed after years of long covid.
I'm offering what worked for me. There's other stuff out there that might work, but I haven't tried. For example, I've heard folks talk about paxlovid working to alleviate symptoms, or using standard courses of antivirals, and so on. I'm here sharing my own experience.
If I've dismissed anyone, I sincerely apologize. That was not my intent.
When I say "it sucks, but you can make it through" my desire is to offer hope to a group of people - that I'm a part of - that often lacks hope given the severity of their symptoms.
As for efficacy, I'd invite you to look into mitochondrial dysfunction and how long covid is related. I'll note that a carb heavy diet is one of the ways to reboot energy production on the body, which can be potent for reducing fatigue.
Given the tenor of discourse around C19, I cannot blame you for making this generalization. I'm not even offended. It's a shitty place to be when no one can hear anyone else because the conversation is so volatile. There's definitely division here. The gramscian Marxists would be proud. We've been played straight out of Rules For Radicals.
I'll note that I haven't done what you've accused me of, though. Perhaps that counts for something, Perhaps not.
And long COVID significantly increases your risk of death from other causes, including heart attack and stroke.
I did read recently that a long course of acyclovir may be a working treatment, possibly even cure, for long COVID. But in order to get that out to people, we'd have to start taking long COVID seriously.
This summer we finally relaxed a lot after years of masking, and BAM, a child coughed right on my wife's face and she got long covid. Fortunately she seems to be almost totally recovered now (fingers crossed for no relapse) , but she has spent two months with fatigue and headaches strong enough to prevent her from working or doing many daily activities.
My wife is in her 30s and healthy. COVID can still be quite brutal, although of course the extent of the measures one should take is highly debatable and subjective.
I got another round of rona in February of this year and suddenly became so tired. I needed 14+ hours of sleep and concentrating was next to impossible. The fatigue was overwhelming at times. Some six months later I'm on my way out of that now, with more good days than bad.
It's good that she had you to rely on. I did a lot of reading on long covid and there were and so are so many people isolated because they're basically spent all the time.
Yearly flu vaccines have been around since the 1940s and change yearly to adapt to the latest strains. I don't see why covid should be any different in this respect.
I mean, I don't think a flu shot is worth most people's time either. If you're around people with compromised immune systems sure, but for your average person it's really not beneficial.
> You got the shot 5 times, still caught it, and you call it a vaccine...
After almost 4 years of this virus, 3 years of covid vaccines, a presumably basic level of biological education, the baseline level of curiosity that I'd have thought would be present in anyone reading HN, and the world of free information at our fingertips, I don't rightly understand why people keep making elementary mistakes like this.
I mean, you'd probably still wear a seatbelt after having an accident... It's insurance, like the flu vax, not completely preventative.
By redefining "vaccine" only as something that provides "sterilizing immunity" (which actually only a few of them have ever provided, and thus, this expectation was never actually part of the original definition; see: https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-few-vaccines-prevent...) and thus impugning vaccine advocacy (or specifically, COVID vaccine use) as misguided at best, you are actually contributing to a narrative of science/medicine doubt that will literally lead to more death in the world. So please reconsider your carefully-worded position.
the main risk is long covid, not dying. exact risk of LC per infection is unclear but the order of magnitude of the figures i'm seeing for it are too high. i'm wearing ffp3 indoors in public places
COVID is what saved us from four more years of Trump (and perhaps many more after that of his family and Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and Steven Miller and Steve Bannon and the list goes on and on...).
The issue is the definition of 'better'. If you think access to food, medication, education, higher life expectancy, then yes.
IMHO though, a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness you experience while being alife (i.e. decoupled from life expectancy).
I would then conclude (and I am really happy to be proved wrong) that the developed world being/becoming better is considerably more difficult to argue for.
Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs not experienced since WWII. [1] is just from a quick googling and US-only. You won't have trouble finding much more evidence to support this though, for many other 1st world countries.
I would bet there is a direct link to this; between making GPD the driving factor for a country's governance vs. e.g. happiness of its citizens. Look no further than Scandinavian countries (Norway is the exeption, not declining but at least also not increasing)[2].
> a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness
So, instead of measuring the objective/empirical things that:
1. Keep people alive
2. Keep them from going hungry
3. Make them healthy and pain-free
4. Keep them warm (or cool, where appropriate)
5. Etc etc etc
You instead are suggesting that we measure some subjective mood that no one can define well, test for, or detect with instrumentation? That would be the better measure?
> Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs
I would not argue that these are insignificant, but there are methodological problems with both.
Suicide may have been traditionally undercounted for religious reasons. If you're investigating a suicide in the 1950s, it might just have been a gun-cleaning accident instead. Saves the family grief, means the deceased can be buried in the cemetery the family wants, etc.
Depression, while real, might still be subject to the sort of contagious hypochondriac panics that describe the late 20th century and early 21st so well.
Or, alternatively... it might have been undercounted until recently. We're not seeing an increase so much as that people are merely aware of it.
> Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs not experienced since WWII. [1] is just from a quick googling and US-only. You won't have trouble finding much more evidence to support this though, for many other 1st world countries.
It's difficult to compare suicide statistics over time, especially over decades, because definitions change. (For one example, in England a coroner used to need to be able to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that a person had died by suicide, and that changed to balance of probabilities in 2018).
It's also important not to use sources like media outlets for suicide statistics, because they often don't understand what's being counted or how it's being counted. Statistics are tricky, and media often get them wrong.
You say that it's easy to show that suicides are at an all time high in many first world countries, but that's not correct. In many countries rates peaked in about 2008 - 2010 because of world wide financial crash, and have been declining since then. We might see another peak because of the financial (and other) distress caused by pandemic, but so far we're not seeing a big increase.
Maybe you’re thinking of a “gilded age” in the sense of Twain. The Golden Age of Hesiod and Ovid was defined by peace and justice amongst a golden race. It’s about ideals and peace rather than material prosperity. The metals debase from gold to silver to bronze to iron as conflict increases and the social contract breaks.
>The vast majority of humanity has never had it better
There has been a general upswing since 1600 or so, so you could say that about most years since then, at least in economic terms. In terms of happiness it seems kind of flat though.
Btw, we are living in a golden age. The vast majority of humanity has never had it better.