Pick 100 random people from 100 random times in history. Millennials will have objectively better quality of life than almost all of them. That isn't to say that we don't have a huge number of problems that should be completely solvable, but good grief, we need some perspective here.

How does this respond to parent, which didn't even mention other generations, cavemen, medieval serfs, etc? Who really benefits from this "perspective" you suggest? Not the millennials under discussion, nor 99% of anyone else. You certainly don't benefit from it, so why suggest it?

Let me be more direct: suggesting that the life of the average Millennial is so uniquely miserable that the best approach is to give up trying to make things better, and implant simulated memories is one of the most myopic, selfish and self serving drivel I've heard in recent memory.

Here you attempt to distract from the basic dishonesty of your inter-generational "whataboutism" through critique of something GP didn't suggest. GP's observations of the present and near-future are discouraging, but they're accurate. The cavemen and the serfs are not our opponents; our opponents are alive right now. GP speculated that we could be kinder to the dying (seriously, that's what you're arguing against), but didn't recommend surrender.

[I had a suggestion for "action" here, but I deleted it before posting.]

Your making my point far better than I could, thank you.

I think it's supposed to explain that because the hardworking and underpaid are better off than cavemen, they will also obviously continue to be better off than cavemen, so all problems are therefore tractable, and also currently being solved. Also, that if you live better than a caveman you should show some gratitude and stop complaining. Something something Steven Pinker Dr. Pangloss.

Material conditions is just one way of measuring quality of life. Not even the most important one, when it comes to hapiness

I completely agree with you. However, I'm responding to the OP's thesis which seems to be at least partially rooted in a critique of material conditions. I definitely think there's a deeper argument to be explored here around how we can be one of the most materially rich societies in history and also perhaps the least happy.

Meh, I cited some non-material conditions too.

Pick 100 random people from 100 different places of Earth. The HN reader will (statistically) have the objectively most inane future-optimism out of all of them, latching onto Elon Musk tweets about colonizing Mars, democratizing technology by way of the latest “decentralized” trend, thinking that nuclear power + EV will solve climate change, just to name a few.

They will also have at least double the expected income of whatever group they decide to harangue for not apprecating their “quality of life”.

Not sure if you're serious or joking? Surely the effort would be better spent to genuinely increase quality of life.

Well, genuinely increasing QoL requires me to convince a large mass of people. Developing this technology only needs progress against nature. The former problem is generally intractable for me.

That's like solving the problem of not having a meaningful relationship (and sex) with watching porn.

It's a substitute alright. It's also not a solution, just a crutch.

Saw that you got downvoted for your metaphor. I'm not surprised as HN is extremely defensive of porn, which I guess makes sense, sadly, given the demographics. But I wanted to go out of my way to say thank you for speaking against it.

Crutches are useful tools. We still produce and recommend lots of actual crutches every day for a good reason.

Don't think we use them as long term solutions over things like physiotherapy though.

Why do people act like the tiny slice of life where you're dying is a really important part

Because death is terrifying at a primal level that almost can't be articulated.

Anything that reduces the anticipated terror and misery is seen as desirable.

That's mostly what cryonics is about, by the way. It gives hope at your moment of death that perhaps you'll come back someday.

Oddly enough religion is not just about that, but it does serve that purpose often.

Because for most people involved, the tiny slice of life where you're dying is the only thing they empirically experience.

I can't parse this sentence.

I think it's a convoluted invocation of the idea that everyone is dying from the moment they are brought into this world of struggle and entropy.

The video game "To The Moon" and its sequels/related media explores this premise.

Modern medicine gives you an opioid instead on your death bed.

If we have such a technology, you think it will be used to comfort the dying, rather than manipulate the living? Wow, are you an optimist.

Yeah, let's not fix problems, let's sweep them under false memory carpet.

But why go all that far? If we want people to be happy "in their deathbed" or in life in general, we could always mandate euphoric drugs 24/7...

> we could always mandate euphoric drugs 24/7...

or a Buy Now button

Don’t we already do that? We give people phones and apps and hyper stimulation to keep them as happy as possible. Go watch TikToks of people pulling funny pranks or big tits bouncing in your face for several hours and be happy. Or make videos yourself and get rewarded with likes.

Yes, and this will be engineered by the... benevolent past generations which are already dead? The “zoomers”?