Humankind's best days ahead or behind?

[Ego]

http://munkdebates.com/livestream

[SimpleLife]

Didn't watch but I think society overall is degrading. Yes, you can post crime statistics all you want, but ask any old person and they will tell you. Plus it is only a matter of time before a new plague of some kind sweeps the planet. Heck, it wiped out about 1/3 of the worlds population before. I can only imagine what globalization will do to increase that.

Until then, you will have continued innovation in the areas of science, technology, medicine, that make many cool things possible. So in some ways it gets better but overall, not so much.

[cmonkey]

Society is degrading yes, but its because the old narrative of infinite growth and consumerism is not working nearly as well anymore and our culture hasn't caught on yet. Energy is key right now. Overall, everything is getting better yes (in terms of life-span, wars, poverty, etc..) but falling energy inputs threaten to unravel all of this. The only reason we have developed what we have and improved what we have over the last 200 years is because of super-dense, portable energy (oil).

I believe that if we were to understand what is changing (falling EROEI) and why we could craft a much better future than what we have left behind given all of the enhancements of the industrial age (e.g. Homesteading - there are so many tools/techniques/technology that have made homesteading a lot easier than it was just 100 years ago). Change happens on an individual level adding up to cultural change, so forums like this give me some small hope. Having mass, instant communication (i.e. the internet) is one of the key differences that might "make this time different", if we can manage to change our narrative and keep the internet all up and running.

My life has gotten so much better in just the last year or two, since I've come to understand macro-trends in energy and finance and I've mentally come to terms with the end-game. 'Life as we know it' is going to end, that is absolute. Frankly, 'life as I knew it' (before becoming informed and finding this group {e.g. a restless consumer}) has already ended. Endlessly pursuing growth is extremely damaging and stressful. Mentally (and physically to a degree) I am post growth in my own personal life and its becoming very peaceful.

Whatever our future path, its going to be one heck of a ride (especially if you are INTJ bent and can see these things playing out). Personally, I am excited for either path to play out.

[Ego]

This debate made me feel schizophrenic. I agreed with everyone. By many measures we are getting better. No doubt. At the same time we are becoming more vulnerable to big catastrophes because we've become better at eliminating the little ones. It is those little ones that teach us, like baby steps, how to cope with he large ones.

Alain de Botton is receiving a lit of criticism for his performance but, despite his stupid scientism argument, I thought he made a good point about how it is foolish to convince oneself that things will continue to get better because when they don't, the fall is doubly hard.

[Dave]

What makes one day better than another? One century better than another? For who? Residents in the USA, Thailand, or Kenya? McDonald's workers, farmers, or capitalists?

It is not my intention to be overly philosophical, but everything is relative to everything else. I am not sure you can derive any sort of meaningful conclusion from such a discussion, except for a comparison between two very narrow slices of reality.

Or maybe I am just very simple minded .

[jennypenny]

This article from Do The Math kind of sums up my feelings. I think we're stagnant and haven't made any real progress in decades. A lot of what counts as 'progress' these days is only an attempt to gussy up the doldrums.

Whether it's only a pause on the great march forward or the crest of human civilization, I'm not sure.

[Dragline]

What makes one day better than another? One century better than another? For who? Residents in the USA, Thailand, or Kenya? McDonald's workers, farmers, or capitalists?

It is not my intention to be overly philosophical, but everything is relative to everything else. I am not sure you can derive any sort of meaningful conclusion from such a discussion, except for a comparison between two very narrow slices of reality.

Or maybe I am just very simple minded .

I agree with you. Change is inevitable. Whether its "better" or "worse" is a very localized/personal experience.

These mega-discussions always fall down because they fail to define "better" at the outset. So you end up with laundry lists of what is better, at least for some, and what is worse, at least for some.

In the end, almost nobody lives an "aggregate" life, which simply means that the individual experience invariably trumps most long-term trends and tends to be more binary as far as the individual is concerned. Either the hurricane hits your area or it doesn't. Either you get cancer or you don't. Knowing that chances of something bad are diminished does not help very much if you happen to be the unlucky victim.

[IlliniDave]

I'm in the camp of debating what exactly is better and what exactly is worse? In the end it's up to the individual to decide that and in large measure the individual is responsible for her/his own contentment. I suppose for some people maybe membership of a culture or society defines what's better or what's worse. There will always be people that start on the relatively worse side of things and end up better, and the opposite. One's own trajectory probably means a lot more than any societal metrics, and probably taints how one grades the evolution of one's culture. I'm sure people of royal pedigree in France thought the French Revolution was Peak Oil and climate change mixed together and distilled to purity. The average peasant probably felt like it was all iphones and internet and inexpensive Tesla automobiles. Ditto for the settling of the American continents by Europeans--great for Europeans and Europe, not so hot for "Americans" at the time. I suppose the trick is identifying who the future winners will be and aligning with them.

[Chad]

+1 to everyone suggesting this is a difficult discussion to have.

Some points to remember in the discussion:
- The majority of the societal issues some of you probably have in mind have been around for centuries, with some arguably around forever. We are just now getting to the point were we have the time, resources, tech, information, etc. to actually try and tackle them. Whether we are successful in this endeavor is a different question. But, it wasn't better in the past, just different.

- Media is another reason everyone thinks everything is getting worse. They want headlines and end of the world headlines are the best. Thus, everything happening is ending the world, making it worse, etc. It's not interesting if the world is going to be here tomorrow.

- Media is also 24/7 and they need to create "news." Most of the time it's either not news or it's something you would have never heard about in 1980. It's like my relatives from a small town always asking me how I can live in a city. They always ask if I'm worried I might be a victim of crime. Yet, my uncle and aunt in that small town had their house robbed. Their view point is skewed because they see crime reported on the nightly news, but don't take the size of the population into account or the fact they would have never heard about that crime two cities over in 1980. It's all perspective.

- Also, as I have noted before, this forum leans heavily to the doom and gloom side, so there is a bias here.

[7Wannabe5]

Depends on how loosely you define "humankind." I have no clue what life will be like for my genetically modified great-great-grandchildren.

[RealPerson]

It also depends on what you define as "best days". I would submit that health, deep and gratifying social relationships, and sufficient resources to not worry about life and limb, are the essential parts of the "best days". The latest iPhone is not part of this. It appears to me that the increase in obesity, chronic lifestyle diseases, long working hours interfering with the social contacts, and excessive debt causing people to worry about having adequate resources, all run contrary to this. So whether we have the best days ahead of us is mostly dependent on individual choices. We have the choice, which is a huge victory by itself. It depends on making wise choices. Being clear about what makes a "best day" is really all it takes.

The debate was mostly about things outside of control of the individual, essentially on a macroscopic scale. They totally missed the important part, which is the individual having the power to create their own "best days". The spread of prosperity across the globe just means that many more people have the option to make that choice. That is reason for optimism. The fact that apparently other nations want to emulate the choices the western world has made, makes me somewhat less optimistic.

[GandK]

It also depends on what you define as "best days". I would submit that health, deep and gratifying social relationships, and sufficient resources to not worry about life and limb, are the essential parts of the "best days". The latest iPhone is not part of this.

I agree.

It's disturbing to me that there's pretty solid research on what makes most people happy/healthy most of the time, but the financial incentives for business in our current society seem to all be on the side of making people as unhappy as possible, then providing a "fix." Every commercial for every product seems to be along the lines of, "Your life sucks, doesn't it? But this guy's life doesn't suck! Don't you want to be happy and have more friends, better sex, better clothes, tastier food, and have people at you like you amount to something like this guy? You do? Then buy this blender." News, same thing. "There's a big scary X lurking outside your building right this very second! Details at 11! And in the meantime, watch this Pizza Hut commercial so we can make money to bring you useful warnings like this one... kthanxbai."

If we could commercialize well-being - or if we could stigmatize those whose profit model revolves around inflicting and inflaming human suffering - we might actually move the needle on this. Not sure how we can accomplish the former, though. Happy, content people by definition do not need much of anything.

[Ego]

Every commercial for every product seems to be along the lines of, "Your life sucks, doesn't it? But this guy's life doesn't suck! Don't you want to be happy and have more friends, better sex, better clothes, tastier food, and have people at you like you amount to something like this guy? You do? Then buy this blender."

Not EVERY commercial. There are a few that commercialize well-being.

[GandK]

Not EVERY commercial. There are a few that commercialize well-being.

OK, OK. Viagra.

Stereotypes become stereotypes because too many people fit them, Ego...

[vexed87]

...Ditto for the settling of the American continents by Europeans--great for Europeans and Europe, not so hot for "Americans" at the time. I suppose the trick is identifying who the future winners will be and aligning with them.

+1 to this post.

Another one here agreeing with the sentiment that the cultural paradigm one finds themselves aligned with is what defines perception of being better or worse off in any given circumstances. Cyclists who hate motorised traffic, air pollution and desire that all people live in a more sustainable and ecologically friendly manner, will perceive the forth coming oil crunch and price hikes a blessing in disguise. Those that treasure convenience at all costs when it comes to travel will find the energy shortages and price volatility unsavoury and prohibitive to their car ownership.

I think it’s important to remember that as long as people are able to meet their fairly modest needs, the consequences of a ‘TEOTWAWKI’ sennario would be irrelevant to their quality of life.

[cmonkey]

I think it’s important to remember that as long as people are able to meet their fairly modest needs, the consequences of a ‘TEOTWAWKI’ sennario would be irrelevant to their quality of life.

This is exactly what I meant by stating my life is getting better, despite not using a car anymore or engaging the frivolties, etc...(i.e. a lower-energy life) Change your expectations for what this life is supposed to be about.

So I think its a safe bet to say the winning folks will be those in this camp.

[Ego]

OK, OK. Viagra.

Not exactly what I had in mind but, eh, I guess that's true.

[enigmaT120]

For a long time, TEOTWAWKI was my early retirement plan. It's almost too late to retire early now. But I still feel fine.

[jacob]

Humankind's _most interesting days_ are ahead

Seriously, though, this is why I think that debating sucks. It was obnoxiously clear almost from the get-go that they were debating completely different things. It's analogous to the more trivial question of malnutrition. What's the situation there? If you frame it in absolute numbers, the number of malnutrishioned ppl in the world has been a constant 1 billion for a long long time => The problem is not being solved. If you frame it in relative numbers, then because the total number has been growing, the relative amount of malnutrition has gone down => The problem is trending towards a solution.

Preferred perspective reveals what kind of perspective one is holding. That debaters seem almost constitutionally or pathologically unable to appreciate/recognize other perspectives is frustrating. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQMoB4aUn04 ... it's worth the 25 minutes. Really, it is!!

So, what does it mean that e.g. malnourishment is both trending better and getting nowhere. Well, to cut it short, it means that if you're stuck in a country that's screwed up, you'll keep starving since the situation hasn't improved for a long time; whereas if you look at humanity more abstractedly, fewer are starving. IOW, if malnourishment is an abstract concept, i.e. academically speaking, things look better. If malnourishment is a personal problem, your situation is hopeless.

Now, back to the debate.

From a quant perspective, each side is looking at a very multidimensional data-set.

The pro-side is picking the 10 dimensions that characterize much of the lower part of the Maslow pyramid (basic human needs) and draw some correlations between time and value. Such a correlation is also called a trendline. They then extrapolate these trend lines with the main argument that humankind (the average human being on planet Earth, which BTW coincidentally spends as much as I do) is doing better.

I think that given globalization et al. it's quite likely that the below average [spending] human will be able to raise this number. However, this will likely be at the expense of the human beings currently spending more, because the pie ain't getting bigger or much bigger for now (see cmonkey). China is a great example of people outcompeting the less productive people in the first world. IOW, the trend is still up (and usually anything that goes up is more likely to keep going up ... until, of course, it doesn't).

The con-side, in an exercise of futility, tries to get the pro side to acknowledge that there are dimensions that the pro-side ignores. For Gladwell it's the complexity and risk-dimensions (the Homer-Dixon objection).---That the risk of global catastrophe has substantially increased. For Alain, it's the psychological aspects of the future ... that once you figured out the lower levels (which you WILL have in the pro's extrapolated future), then you peak out and start dealing with "first world problems" ... which might more precisely be described as "Maslow pyramid top"-problems. Alain's point is that humanity hasn't been able to solve these despite 2000 years and going (probably longer, it's just that we don't have much literature dating back prior to the Ancient Greeks).

My take-away: Similar to the youtube video I posted above, I'm appalled that nobody in the debate made this observation.

[Dragline]

Alain de Botton on Tim Ferriss's podcast today: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/11/10/alain-de-botton/

And one of the first things they talk about is needs at the top of the Maslow pyramid.