If you see multiple indicators that rapid and increasing population growth is assured as a sign that 'the world is getting better', I fear for our future.
I do not agree on the "increasing" part. Developing countries are undergoing the same transition western countries had at the beginning of the 20th century, where the number of children went down from 5+ to <2 like it is today.
The UN predicts that the population will stabilize between 11 and 12 billion around 2100. That is much more than today which poses a large challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
Taken by itself I don't think population growth is a positive or negative statistic. People are living longer, death by disease is down, childhood mortality and death by pregnant mothers is down. These are all good stats.
How population affects climate change seems to be the biggest negative externality.
Alone maybe they are "good stats". The trend doesn't bode well for a sustained livelihood with our planet when fishery stocks are being exploited and depleted at an equal rate.
Of the 600 marine fish stocks monitored by FAO:
3% are underexploited
20% are moderately exploited
52% are fully exploited
17% are overexploited
7% are depleted
1% are recovering from depletion
Further troubles exist on land, with global deforestation increasing YOY.
How will more people living longer benefit from these factors?
Now all we need is the media to stop being so negative about everything and break the 'controversy for clicks' bullshit they seem to depend on. Honestly, just a complete freeze on stories about Trump, Brexit and terrorism for a week or two would probably cheer up a lot of people and break the 'everythings going to hell' narrative that's infecting society right now.
I used to cite facts like those in these charts to try to convince myself or others that things are on an upward trajectory and that we’re just at a local minimim, if anything. But man, I just can’t stomach it anymore. Most of the points made by these charts will be moot at best and reversed at worse if the concerns outlined in that latest climate report come true, and we’ve got politicians and a population who at best don’t give a shit. It seems naive to try to make the “everything is getting better!” point anymore.
My understanding is that the IPCC estimates put the costs of climate change at ~2% of world GDP, and more aggressive estimates still have it under 10%.
Is there a reason that cost would eliminate all of the gains cited in this article? Or are you basing the expected impacts off of another source?
>My understanding is that the IPCC estimates put the costs of climate change at ~2% of world GDP, and more aggressive estimates still have it under 10%.
Kind of like the initial Titanic captain's estimates after the impact with the iceberg?
The IPCC is a bureaucracy, it's job is to balance climate change control demands with requirements from businesses and governments to "not do much" because doing what's appropriate is bad for business and goes against the hysterics for "continuous growth" on which modern policy and economy is based on...
I’m not so concerned with the fiscal costs, and I think it’s short-sighted to think of the problem as one that can be solved or ameliorated by moving dollars and percentages around. The human and environmental costs, dollars aside, are staggering and painful to think about. E.g. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-...
37% of world population exposed to extreme heat waves and an additional 400 million people exposed to extreme drought at a 2 degree increase. And they’ll be angry, and they’ll either find somewhere else to go en masse or will suffer even more if they can’t leave.
It is excruciating to think about. The consternation in Europe at a million or so Syrian refugees has been grotesque. Let alone hundreds of millions trying to get in, at the same time Southern Europe is having crop failures itself due to drought.
That’s the IPCC estimate assuming we take urgent global action now.
But instead of taking urgent global action, Brazil are about to open the rain forest to agri-business; the White House does not believe it is possible to stop climate change and is rolling back environmental protections and pulling out of the Paris Accord (which was nowhere near enough in the first place, and which none of the other signatories were achieving anyway); and Europe is distracted by Brexit and demagoguery. China are looking more serious, but are also pissing in the wind at current levels of effort.
The IPCC report is in any case probably extremely optimistic on the impact of releasing the methane stored in permafrost. That could catapult temperatures up far too quickly for the ecosystem to adapt to, or even humanity to adapt to, even if we science very, very hard.
So 1.5 degrees is what we get if we put in unprecedented effort that none of the important countries are showing any signs of doing, and also if we use probably-optimistic models.
At least 4 degrees is more likely on current trajectory, and that is absolutely terrifying. North of that we get into the end of civilisation in anything like its current form.
Also, arguably the most important gains of the last decades are from what used to be called the developing world dragging itself out of poverty. A disproportionate share of the economic and human cost of climate collapse will fall on those countries. Which doesn’t seem very fair because they haven’t had enough time to significantly contribute to or benefit from burning hydrocarbons.
It is quite frustrating because doing what we need to do to stop all of this is relatively simple, if quite difficult, is basically inevitable anyway because
renewables are increasingly cheaper than fossil fuels, and will make the world better in all sorts of other ways.
I'd say biodiversity is a better one. If you include the opportunity cost of losing all the value bound in the genes of organisms that will go extinct before we can use it, for example, things look much worse.
If you insist on GDP, then what will be the effect on the distribution of wealth? And decades of stagnant GDP's effect on investment in technology? Without constant growth many things will fall apart in our society.
I don't think any economic models are reliable in the event of 4 degrees of warming. The system is far too complex to forecast with any precision.
We can conclusively say it would be bad, but "how bad" can't be stated quantitatively. Only qualitatively, in terms of "X percent of land would be rendered uninhabitable" or "X% increase in crop failures".
Those are numbers, of course and can be estimated better. I'm saying they can't be combined to a global gdp total. The system is too large, and there will be cascading effects. Some sort of war is also a likely result, and then all bets are off.
Your understanding is wrong. There is no attempt to estimate costs in the most recent IPCC reports.
There is, however, a long catalog of horrors, including major biosphere die-offs on land and sea, massive forced migrations, loss of food security and corresponding loss of political and military stability, drought, sea level rise, and vastly increased probability of extreme weather damage.
This is not about GPP, this is about the fact that terraforming a planet to make it less, not more, hospitable to its native ecology is quite astoundingly stupid.
This is for the entire planet. In a lot of developed countries like the US, the standard of living has mostly been stagnant for 80%+ of people for decades.
Sure, and my point is not that these gains are meaningless for the people who have e.g. been lifted out of extreme poverty. My point is that having improved or solved those problems will be for naught if the giganting looming one reverses those gains. Given the enormity of that problem, taking an attitude of “but things are actually getting better!” is either shortsighted or willfully obtuse.
This is my view of it. I mean, I'm very glad we don't have worsening poverty + environmental catastrophe (with equal emissions I mean). That wouldn't be worse than now, but the medium term prognosis looks pretty grim unless we figure a way to suck carbon from the air at scale.
Making incredible gains that reverse within a couple decades isn't much of a feat.
Can you expand on why you think the storm will safely pass? Because by most estimates, the storm is going to stick around for a long time and destroy or make uninhabitable much of the island.
You might want to consider some alternative views, for example this article from Stanford seems reasonable in the tone of its discussion:
https://www.hoover.org/research/our-latest-global-warming-sc...
While human effects on global climate certainly have to be considered, the idea that 200 years of industrial human civilization is enough to meaningfully alter global climate implies that if we wanted to, we could terraform other planets within just a few 100 years - which I’m sure is wrong. Or we would need to somehow make the case that this particular planet was in an unstable equilibrium, so our actions were somehow enough to knock things out of equilibrium, which I also doubt: If the earth’s climate equilibrium was so unstable, I doubt mankind would have survived this long.
“Don’t sell your coat” by Harold Ambler is another well-argued discussion of some of these issues.
Of course, some people would argue that you shouldn’t even consider alternative views on this topic, because it’s “climate change denial” - reminds me of the fundamentalist Muslim priests I would have to listen to growing up, telling me not to listen to the “unbelievers” because they would corrupt my mind.. :)
I find your argument somewhat specious. Terraforming entire planets in a few hundred years is feasible, if you devote
significant resources of the entire human race to it i.e we have had a drastic impact on the climate by pumping trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. The equivalent effort on Mars would be impossible due to cost, but on earth it was a by-product of an already profitable process (extract and burn fossil fuels, cut down forests).
Only those with income in top 75-99 percentiles have not followed the richest 1 percent.
West bitches about income inequality because our working class and middle class have low productivity growth. In the rest of the world incomes have kept up.
Looks from that source like things have improved enormously in Asia, improved slightly in Africa, and after a century of improvements, have started to reverse in the West.
While I'm thankful for all these things, empiricism falls short of being able to tell us about the state of the world.
What are the units of love, and suffering? How do you measure them, and plot them on a graph? And furthermore, how do you know how these will trend in the next decade, much less the next year?
Don't give these charts too much credit in the "empiricism" department either. There's lots of cherry picking and manipulation involved in government statistics...
Not a big fan of vox but this is a nice article, such reminders are always welcome. It is however unfortunate that the journalist feels a need to start with the usual silly bashfest - democracy is dying you see, except for this graph in our own article that shows democracies have never been more common. I realise this journalist is distinguishing between "democracy" and "liberal democracy" but for an article filled with graphs you'd think they could show some data to back up the point.
It's kind of a form of virtue signaling (edit: or at least tribalism.) Like saying: "I'm about to say good things about the state of the world, that don't jive with your current feelings about things. I know, I know, we're on the same team, and none of what I'm about to say is at all attributable to that awful politician we all hate."
>>> 4) People in developed countries have more leisure time
which is justified by a decrease in the number of work hours iin a week. As it occured to those guys that if the number of working hours decrease it's because unemployment increases. And, in my country, unemployment is not exactly leisure time, it's stressful time, ain't money, must find a job...
>>> 8) Death in childbirth is rarer
Well most of the progress were down in the 19th century, so they're counting mostly insignifcant things (statistically, I don*t mean childbirth is insignificant at all, got kids)
>>> 9) People have been getting taller for centuries
That's in europe, i.e. a small part of the world
>>> 17) We’ve rapidly reduced the supply of nuclear weapons
didn't know that, it looks much better than those anti-nuclear guys said to me last time. Good news indeed.
>>> 18) More people in the world live in a democracy now
That's so wester/occidental... Who says that democracy is such a good news ?
>>> 19) More people are going to school for longer
What about the other countries ?
>>> 22) Access to the internet is increasing
Read the exact opposite 2 days ago (lost the source though :( )
>>> 17) We’ve rapidly reduced the supply of nuclear weapons
>didn't know that, it looks much better than those anti-nuclear guys said to me last time. Good news indeed
On the other hand the "reduced supply" is irrelevant, since they're still more than enough to kill millions and impact the lives of billions. The important question is if we reduced the likelihood of them being used, not if they went from 1000 to 200 in some hangar...
> That's so wester/occidental... Who says that democracy is such a good news ?
"The Dictator's Handbook" [1] does a good job of explaining various political systems lays down and presents an argument for why people in democracies have more freedoms and are generally more prosperous.
>Well most of the progress were down in the 19th century, so >they're counting mostly insignifcant things (statistically, >I don*t mean childbirth is insignificant at all, got kids)
The data shows a good progress the recent 2-3 decades for Asia and Africa.
>>> 19) More people are going to school for longer
A nice optimistic view on the development of mankind in this world. Its probably very human to think mankind is the only kind that really matters, so mankind = world.
I'm in the middle of reading "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling, which does an excellent job of clearly demonstrating that not only are billions of people living better lives than they did 20 years ago, but that also we're conditioned not to believe that good news.
The world is a lot different than many people think.
I highly recommend it.
[1] Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think - https://amzn.to/2CXPdCu
The world is getting better statistically, that's the good news. That doesn't mean that everyone experiences it even if they are part of that very statistics.
I'd be concerned if the world didn't average one testicle.
I understand the min could have gotten worst, the max higher, and the middle unchanged. And its not like we should all pat ourself on the back and stop trying. But, if the statistic were showing things to be getting worse, it would be way worse. So I can't really agree with the defeatist attitude here, there's no way to put this data in a bad light, this is the trend you want to see.
For example, spending less on food is not the same as eating healthier. In the first world obesity is creating a crisis.
Taller? That traslates to needing more resources. More to feed. More to clothe.
I'm not waiting to be a cynic. But using 20th century metrics nearly two decades into the 21st century is not a status quo that makes me comfortable; especially as I extrapolate into the future.
Ah, but check out the chart about average temperature, we might not need as much clothing after all!
In all seriousness, I’ll take an obesity crisis over starvation any day. Sure we haven’t achieved perfect nutrition, but the situation is undoubtedly better.
Yes, but crucially, they choose to eat too much. They could stop.
Those who starve never do so of their own will, and would absolutely take the alternative if it was available to them.
As for the healthcare costs, I expect we will see something very similar to what happened with tobacco. A combination of economic disincentives and regulatory measures (no sugary drinks and snacks in schools, smaller portions etc), which will ultimately curb the problem.
You act as if free choice occurs in a vacuum. It does not. Billions spent on advertising, public policy designed to benefit the agriculture and food industries: let's not pretend we are all perfectly informed rational actors, that fallacy was debunked a generation ago.
Perhaps. But that's not within the scope of the stat I referenced.
Furthermore, childhood obesity __is__ on the rise. The related illnesses (e.g., type 2 diabetes) consume resources __unnecessarily__. Considering the infant mortality rate in the USA, I'd venture to say, obesity killing children. Please also factor in the dangers associated with obesity and pregnancy.
Spending less SHARE OF INCOME in food means that on average the food is cheaper and/or people are earning more. If you can empathize with people outside the US or Europe, that means that those people that earn $1 or $2 dollars per day all of their income was obviously spent on food. When those people earn $20 per day, they start to buy other goods.
If you reduce the World to the USA, then the problem is indeed worst food. That is currently expressed in the lower life expectancy in the US, compared with the richest countries. But almost any US resident that spends the 10-12% of their wage (world average) in food is going to be correctly feed.
Taller means that your genetics can express to their full potential. It's a very good index from when a country can feed the 100% of the needs of the youngest population. Poor countries malnourishes their youth (not on quantity but on quality) so they don't grow to their full potential height. Their people tend to be smaller. As soon as they become richer their youth starts to be taller. Are you saying that is better to starve the youth to save on future feed or clothings?
Something to eat is __better__ than nothing. You keep reducing The World to The US and it's not the same thing. Many, many people in the world starved in terms of vitamins and other nutrients, and they just fill their body with rice or corn floor. Which is just shy of dying from starvation, and put any body in the brink of the death at the minimal illness.
In those cases, almost any increase in the quantity of food different from rice or floor is beneficial. Suddenly, millions of people could add carrots, tomatoes, oranges, pepper... to their monotonic diet, for the same or even less money. Yes, billions of people are eating __better__ than 30 years ago.
But you insist this is wrong because some people in the US cannot shut their mouth and somehow are forced to eat beef in buckets. Please, explain me how this is related to people starving in Africa 20-30 years ago, or if you are saying thantobesity is a problem there.
Are you saying that it's better for anyone to starve in his youth, to be shorter and to save "resources" when he becomes adult? This has to be the most short-sighted thing I've read in a long time.
You should write a book explaining that theory: "Parents, malnourish your kids so they need to eat less in their adulthood". Maybe cutting a leg or an arm could save resources too: less body needs less food.
Statistical averages are an awful way of measuring anything beyond 100 - 1000 people and I am surprised to see statistics is still practiced in its classic form to this day.
As another poster said, the average person world-wide has one testicle -- yay for valuable info? It basically tells you nothing.
As a programmer struggling in Eastern Europe at 38 year old still -- things are very far from what these rosy articles are trying to convince you of. And seeing what other people at 22-25 are going through... you don't want to know.
But people are quick to believe optimistic statistics when their livelihood isn't at stake. As the saying goes, it ain't true until it happens to you. Then it's suddenly oh so true.
Things getting better in the average doesn't mean they're getting better for you. It does mean that they're improving though. Imagine how hard you'd have it had the average fallen on all these metrics instead of getting better.
None of that means its all great and well. Which I assume is your point?
Would be interesting to see a plot of this graph at the p0 and p100 (min/max) to get an idea of the baselines.
I am saying that this claimed economical well-being is still largely clustered by countries or even regions. That I am struggling means nothing in the global scale, that is true -- but when you see almost everybody around you struggle then you have a very hard time believing these articles.
My mother got a slightly bigger pension -- which changed it from 55 to 60 EUR a month. That's not a typo. Hooray for 10% improvement?
I feel these stats would be much more credible if they gave you your actual % more direct buying power in terms of food, tech or leisure time based on your country -- not on a world-wide average which is non-informative. The way these stats articles are currently framed though, they are all but useless.
I totally agree, some countries and regions could very well be on the decline, while the average is still going up. And that's a big problem. And if you're looking for insight into your own area, ya this is not really trying to be an article to allow you to make data driven decisions about your local politics and laws. It would have been nice of them to put all these into a tableau dashboard with many more dimensions so we could have played with the data some more and gathered better insight.
That said, I disagree about these averages being useless. They're still a valid indicator of the world average in some specific metrics. And for those, they're showing a good trend for the better. If we were to monitor them, and discover a drastic change in one of them, it would be cause for concern. Similarly, seeing them continue to improve is cause for consolation.
I would like even these condensed stats much more if they told us where do these average improvements come from -- and whom they benefit.
I mean, it could just be 20_000 founders in SV getting rich because of the blockchain hype, and 50_000 Chinese businessmen making a lucky break, and 100_000 agriculture businesses going past $10M annual profits, etc. Add some more such data points and I still can't see how the world on average is better off -- it would still show a 5-figure number of businessmen being better off (less than 0.01% of world population), but not how an average single mother of two is.
...I guess I ended up trying to paraphrase another sibling comment of mine -- don't you think that if we see these stats without the extreme ends of the bell curve included, it would give us a better insight on how is the average folk doing?
>Statistical averages are an awful way of measuring anything beyond 100 - 1000 people and I am surprised to see statistics is still practiced in its classic form to this day.
That is only true in the sense that a person who won the lottery would say that "you loose money on average playing the lottery," is bad advice.
You kind of proved my point though. Statistically the winners are less than the losers and that also applies to the world economy at large.
I had a friend who became millionaire at 25 (I was 28 at the time). So I guess if we get 10_000 of these people then suddenly my country's livelihood has improved by 2%?
Not how this works.
I'd like to see stats which don't include the extreme ends of the bell curve. I can bet my neck they will tell a very different story.
>the average person world-wide has one testicle -- yay for valuable info? It basically tells you nothing.
I disagree. If the average per person testicle count were .5 testicles, then you'd know something was amiss because you can expect it to average 1. (the average is slightly less than 1 by the way).
Who decides what's small enough to be amiss, though?
I've seen a lot of comment threads on articles like this one. It basically always goes on like this: mostly first-world country citizens comment, they mostly agree things are getting better, they collectively and wisely nod their heads and everything is good in the world.
...Except on the tons of places where it isn't. If it wasn't for me, my mom's increased pension (from 55 to 60 EUR) would only help her buy food for 1-2 more days -- and she'd be homeless. The global X% improvement means nothing to her and to millions of others.
Let's face it, articles like these make it easy for people to entrench themselves even deeper inside their filter bubbles and echo chambers. I sometimes cynically ponder if that's not their original purpose.
Yes, median would be better than mean. However what is most important is the overall trend. Child mortality trending downward worldwide is a great thing and says the world is getting better in terms of nutrition, disease, etc for children. Is there still child mortality? Yes. Will some parents have to go through the loss of a child? Yes. Is the world getting better overall in this regard? Absolutely.
To latch onto your example: child mortality is at an all-time low but the birth rates are quite low as well so it seems that both things cancel each other out.
One has to wonder if for any positive 1% of such average global improvements there aren't many 5% localized worsenings that aren't shown in the global percentage changes.
"There is a lot that is wrong with this line of thinking. But what is truly disturbing is not so much the methodological fallacies due to scale as their ethical implications: the ‘big picture’ rhetoric obfuscates massive disparities but it also denies their systemic character."
This reminds me of those 'And we can be confident this bull run will last forever!' financial sermons you see just before a major crash.
There are huge, huge problems in the medium/near term. Faith, hope, and what used to be called boosterism are a poor substitute for active, tangible solutions.
Homicide rate have fallen since 1400. Nice.
Why starting that far away? People understand time surrounding them of around 100 years. No one really compares themselves to people that lived 200 years ago or more.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadThe UN predicts that the population will stabilize between 11 and 12 billion around 2100. That is much more than today which poses a large challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
How population affects climate change seems to be the biggest negative externality.
Of the 600 marine fish stocks monitored by FAO:
3% are underexploited
20% are moderately exploited
52% are fully exploited
17% are overexploited
7% are depleted
1% are recovering from depletion
Further troubles exist on land, with global deforestation increasing YOY.
How will more people living longer benefit from these factors?
Is there a reason that cost would eliminate all of the gains cited in this article? Or are you basing the expected impacts off of another source?
Kind of like the initial Titanic captain's estimates after the impact with the iceberg?
The IPCC is a bureaucracy, it's job is to balance climate change control demands with requirements from businesses and governments to "not do much" because doing what's appropriate is bad for business and goes against the hysterics for "continuous growth" on which modern policy and economy is based on...
37% of world population exposed to extreme heat waves and an additional 400 million people exposed to extreme drought at a 2 degree increase. And they’ll be angry, and they’ll either find somewhere else to go en masse or will suffer even more if they can’t leave.
But instead of taking urgent global action, Brazil are about to open the rain forest to agri-business; the White House does not believe it is possible to stop climate change and is rolling back environmental protections and pulling out of the Paris Accord (which was nowhere near enough in the first place, and which none of the other signatories were achieving anyway); and Europe is distracted by Brexit and demagoguery. China are looking more serious, but are also pissing in the wind at current levels of effort.
The IPCC report is in any case probably extremely optimistic on the impact of releasing the methane stored in permafrost. That could catapult temperatures up far too quickly for the ecosystem to adapt to, or even humanity to adapt to, even if we science very, very hard.
So 1.5 degrees is what we get if we put in unprecedented effort that none of the important countries are showing any signs of doing, and also if we use probably-optimistic models.
At least 4 degrees is more likely on current trajectory, and that is absolutely terrifying. North of that we get into the end of civilisation in anything like its current form.
Also, arguably the most important gains of the last decades are from what used to be called the developing world dragging itself out of poverty. A disproportionate share of the economic and human cost of climate collapse will fall on those countries. Which doesn’t seem very fair because they haven’t had enough time to significantly contribute to or benefit from burning hydrocarbons.
It is quite frustrating because doing what we need to do to stop all of this is relatively simple, if quite difficult, is basically inevitable anyway because renewables are increasingly cheaper than fossil fuels, and will make the world better in all sorts of other ways.
Get your shit together humanity.
Source (first result for "gdp global warming 4 degree celsius"): https://phys.org/news/2018-08-trillion-lost-temperatures-deg...
Do you have alternative numbers? 7% of GDP is a big hit, but it's not "end of civilization".
I'd say biodiversity is a better one. If you include the opportunity cost of losing all the value bound in the genes of organisms that will go extinct before we can use it, for example, things look much worse.
If you insist on GDP, then what will be the effect on the distribution of wealth? And decades of stagnant GDP's effect on investment in technology? Without constant growth many things will fall apart in our society.
We can conclusively say it would be bad, but "how bad" can't be stated quantitatively. Only qualitatively, in terms of "X percent of land would be rendered uninhabitable" or "X% increase in crop failures".
Those are numbers, of course and can be estimated better. I'm saying they can't be combined to a global gdp total. The system is too large, and there will be cascading effects. Some sort of war is also a likely result, and then all bets are off.
There is, however, a long catalog of horrors, including major biosphere die-offs on land and sea, massive forced migrations, loss of food security and corresponding loss of political and military stability, drought, sea level rise, and vastly increased probability of extreme weather damage.
This is not about GPP, this is about the fact that terraforming a planet to make it less, not more, hospitable to its native ecology is quite astoundingly stupid.
Making incredible gains that reverse within a couple decades isn't much of a feat.
It's still an island paradise, and the storm will pass.
“Don’t sell your coat” by Harold Ambler is another well-argued discussion of some of these issues.
Of course, some people would argue that you shouldn’t even consider alternative views on this topic, because it’s “climate change denial” - reminds me of the fundamentalist Muslim priests I would have to listen to growing up, telling me not to listen to the “unbelievers” because they would corrupt my mind.. :)
Only those with income in top 75-99 percentiles have not followed the richest 1 percent.
West bitches about income inequality because our working class and middle class have low productivity growth. In the rest of the world incomes have kept up.
Low productivity growth, or low wage growth (and possibly, especially when compared to productivity growth)?
Do you believe those bitching have a legitimate grievance?
https://ourworldindata.org/global-economic-inequality
What are the units of love, and suffering? How do you measure them, and plot them on a graph? And furthermore, how do you know how these will trend in the next decade, much less the next year?
>>> 4) People in developed countries have more leisure time
which is justified by a decrease in the number of work hours iin a week. As it occured to those guys that if the number of working hours decrease it's because unemployment increases. And, in my country, unemployment is not exactly leisure time, it's stressful time, ain't money, must find a job...
>>> 8) Death in childbirth is rarer
Well most of the progress were down in the 19th century, so they're counting mostly insignifcant things (statistically, I don*t mean childbirth is insignificant at all, got kids)
>>> 9) People have been getting taller for centuries
That's in europe, i.e. a small part of the world
>>> 17) We’ve rapidly reduced the supply of nuclear weapons
didn't know that, it looks much better than those anti-nuclear guys said to me last time. Good news indeed.
>>> 18) More people in the world live in a democracy now
That's so wester/occidental... Who says that democracy is such a good news ?
>>> 19) More people are going to school for longer
What about the other countries ?
>>> 22) Access to the internet is increasing
Read the exact opposite 2 days ago (lost the source though :( )
...
On the other hand the "reduced supply" is irrelevant, since they're still more than enough to kill millions and impact the lives of billions. The important question is if we reduced the likelihood of them being used, not if they went from 1000 to 200 in some hangar...
"The Dictator's Handbook" [1] does a good job of explaining various political systems lays down and presents an argument for why people in democracies have more freedoms and are generally more prosperous.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
>Well most of the progress were down in the 19th century, so >they're counting mostly insignifcant things (statistically, >I don*t mean childbirth is insignificant at all, got kids)
The data shows a good progress the recent 2-3 decades for Asia and Africa.
>>> 19) More people are going to school for longer
> What about the other countries ?
The data shows the same trend for most countries.
The world is a lot different than many people think.
I highly recommend it.
[1] Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think - https://amzn.to/2CXPdCu
Max Roser's fantastic project "Our World In Data" [2] does.
Steve Pinker [3] as well.
[1] https://www.gapminder.org/
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker
The world is getting better statistically, that's the good news. That doesn't mean that everyone experiences it even if they are part of that very statistics.
I understand the min could have gotten worst, the max higher, and the middle unchanged. And its not like we should all pat ourself on the back and stop trying. But, if the statistic were showing things to be getting worse, it would be way worse. So I can't really agree with the defeatist attitude here, there's no way to put this data in a bad light, this is the trend you want to see.
For example, spending less on food is not the same as eating healthier. In the first world obesity is creating a crisis.
Taller? That traslates to needing more resources. More to feed. More to clothe.
I'm not waiting to be a cynic. But using 20th century metrics nearly two decades into the 21st century is not a status quo that makes me comfortable; especially as I extrapolate into the future.
In all seriousness, I’ll take an obesity crisis over starvation any day. Sure we haven’t achieved perfect nutrition, but the situation is undoubtedly better.
Fact: More people now die as a result of too much food than not enough.
Add on the related (healthcare) costs and we're over-eating our way to more problems we can't afford.
Those who starve never do so of their own will, and would absolutely take the alternative if it was available to them.
As for the healthcare costs, I expect we will see something very similar to what happened with tobacco. A combination of economic disincentives and regulatory measures (no sugary drinks and snacks in schools, smaller portions etc), which will ultimately curb the problem.
Furthermore, childhood obesity __is__ on the rise. The related illnesses (e.g., type 2 diabetes) consume resources __unnecessarily__. Considering the infant mortality rate in the USA, I'd venture to say, obesity killing children. Please also factor in the dangers associated with obesity and pregnancy.
If you reduce the World to the USA, then the problem is indeed worst food. That is currently expressed in the lower life expectancy in the US, compared with the richest countries. But almost any US resident that spends the 10-12% of their wage (world average) in food is going to be correctly feed.
Taller means that your genetics can express to their full potential. It's a very good index from when a country can feed the 100% of the needs of the youngest population. Poor countries malnourishes their youth (not on quantity but on quality) so they don't grow to their full potential height. Their people tend to be smaller. As soon as they become richer their youth starts to be taller. Are you saying that is better to starve the youth to save on future feed or clothings?
Perhaps. But none the less, as stated, that does not mean ppl are eating __better__.
Fact: More ppl now die as a result of too much food, than not enough.
In those cases, almost any increase in the quantity of food different from rice or floor is beneficial. Suddenly, millions of people could add carrots, tomatoes, oranges, pepper... to their monotonic diet, for the same or even less money. Yes, billions of people are eating __better__ than 30 years ago.
But you insist this is wrong because some people in the US cannot shut their mouth and somehow are forced to eat beef in buckets. Please, explain me how this is related to people starving in Africa 20-30 years ago, or if you are saying thantobesity is a problem there.
Perhaps. None the less, a bigger body requires more resources. In other words, that metric is clearly not all good news.
You should write a book explaining that theory: "Parents, malnourish your kids so they need to eat less in their adulthood". Maybe cutting a leg or an arm could save resources too: less body needs less food.
As another poster said, the average person world-wide has one testicle -- yay for valuable info? It basically tells you nothing.
As a programmer struggling in Eastern Europe at 38 year old still -- things are very far from what these rosy articles are trying to convince you of. And seeing what other people at 22-25 are going through... you don't want to know.
But people are quick to believe optimistic statistics when their livelihood isn't at stake. As the saying goes, it ain't true until it happens to you. Then it's suddenly oh so true.
None of that means its all great and well. Which I assume is your point?
Would be interesting to see a plot of this graph at the p0 and p100 (min/max) to get an idea of the baselines.
My mother got a slightly bigger pension -- which changed it from 55 to 60 EUR a month. That's not a typo. Hooray for 10% improvement?
I feel these stats would be much more credible if they gave you your actual % more direct buying power in terms of food, tech or leisure time based on your country -- not on a world-wide average which is non-informative. The way these stats articles are currently framed though, they are all but useless.
That said, I disagree about these averages being useless. They're still a valid indicator of the world average in some specific metrics. And for those, they're showing a good trend for the better. If we were to monitor them, and discover a drastic change in one of them, it would be cause for concern. Similarly, seeing them continue to improve is cause for consolation.
I mean, it could just be 20_000 founders in SV getting rich because of the blockchain hype, and 50_000 Chinese businessmen making a lucky break, and 100_000 agriculture businesses going past $10M annual profits, etc. Add some more such data points and I still can't see how the world on average is better off -- it would still show a 5-figure number of businessmen being better off (less than 0.01% of world population), but not how an average single mother of two is.
...I guess I ended up trying to paraphrase another sibling comment of mine -- don't you think that if we see these stats without the extreme ends of the bell curve included, it would give us a better insight on how is the average folk doing?
That is only true in the sense that a person who won the lottery would say that "you loose money on average playing the lottery," is bad advice.
I had a friend who became millionaire at 25 (I was 28 at the time). So I guess if we get 10_000 of these people then suddenly my country's livelihood has improved by 2%?
Not how this works.
I'd like to see stats which don't include the extreme ends of the bell curve. I can bet my neck they will tell a very different story.
I disagree. If the average per person testicle count were .5 testicles, then you'd know something was amiss because you can expect it to average 1. (the average is slightly less than 1 by the way).
I've seen a lot of comment threads on articles like this one. It basically always goes on like this: mostly first-world country citizens comment, they mostly agree things are getting better, they collectively and wisely nod their heads and everything is good in the world.
...Except on the tons of places where it isn't. If it wasn't for me, my mom's increased pension (from 55 to 60 EUR) would only help her buy food for 1-2 more days -- and she'd be homeless. The global X% improvement means nothing to her and to millions of others.
Let's face it, articles like these make it easy for people to entrench themselves even deeper inside their filter bubbles and echo chambers. I sometimes cynically ponder if that's not their original purpose.
One has to wonder if for any positive 1% of such average global improvements there aren't many 5% localized worsenings that aren't shown in the global percentage changes.
> Yes, median would be better than mean.
That's my main complaint about this article.
"There is a lot that is wrong with this line of thinking. But what is truly disturbing is not so much the methodological fallacies due to scale as their ethical implications: the ‘big picture’ rhetoric obfuscates massive disparities but it also denies their systemic character."
There are huge, huge problems in the medium/near term. Faith, hope, and what used to be called boosterism are a poor substitute for active, tangible solutions.