In 2022, we:
- Reversed organ death in pigs
- Made the first embryo from stem cells
- Made a pan-influenza vaccine
- Saw the beginning of time
- Got best-ever results from cancer & obesity therapy trials
- Maybe cracked the case of multiple sclerosis
From: https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1600864770751860737 (https://archive.is/pi95L)
Researchers want to slightly oversell their discoveries, and the media wants to misunderstand to oversell them even more. Humbug 9 times out of 10.
Yep, and they were clear that this was not ignition.
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/09/breaking-news-fusion-re...
So a order of magnitude larger output power promised... except when you count total input power and reasonable heat engine efficiencies (if installing one had been planned), it's unlikely they would even get more power out than in !
But then, the very same month I was also made aware of SP(ARC), which is revolutionary because it can (in theory) afford to be so much smaller than ITER (which is ridiculously large and therefore expensive in a super linear way) :
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/10/smaller-more-efficie...
Why can't we do something about the genocide of young black men that is being committed by young black men, for example?
Are you talking about a specific country in Africa? If so, what do you propose? Should we send US military to force a regime change? Because that worked so well in Afghanistan, right?
Our crime statistics show the greatest threat to a young black male is another young black male. Look at the Chicago shooting stats every weekend.
Dig deep into gun deaths and you will see that is young men if color shooting andurdering each other in gang and criminal contexts that accounts for most of the deaths.
And yet the media can only rise to care about gun deaths when it is white children being murdered. That shows their real values.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
Call it whatever you like, but acknowledge that this is horrific.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251877/murder-victims-in...
I have zero sympathy for criminals who're killing each other. Have you tried comparing murder rates of innocent non-violent civilians across different races?
And the greatest threat to a young white male is another young white male. Does that mean that there's a genocide of white men by white men?
More black men are murdered than white men as an absolute count, which is horrific considering that whites outnumber blacks by at least 4:1.
Is it more racist to not talk about black on black violence, or to address it directly? Refusing to acknowledge the issue so we can tailor policy to save black lives is white privilege exemplified.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251877/murder-victims-in...
Murder is bad.
If black people are murdered out of proportion to all other races, by a wide margin, that's something that needs to be investigated.
Down vote me racists.
I resent the Taliban for depriving of the right of women to receive eductaion, but that doesn't mean I support meddling in other countries' internal affairs. Believe in Afghanistan will generate an enlightened regime in the future.
eg: something like 99.95% of the planet (all but 1-2 Million) have 0 or near 0 benefit from most of those findings (save for maybe the vaccine). But important things are going away -- treating people well, having happy lives, justice and being treated fairly. It's not a good tradeoff IMO.
I think that depends a lot on where you live and what you look like relative to those around you. I wouldn’t think black citizens in the US in the 1950s would agree with what you’re saying. An Asian coworker of mine said he always thought it would be interesting to go back in time and live for a little bit in the 1940s, but every time he thinks that he has to remind himself what they did to Asians in the 1940s here in the US.[0]
I do think that tech (particularly social media) has amplified a lot of the bad social behavior that people have always had. I don’t think there’s more of it, just that it’s gotten louder. Someone who could only be an asshole to the people around them can now go online and be an asshole to millions of people around the world at once.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
This is not the right way to evaluate the benefits of science. This is the year those advancements start having an affect. The same thing was true about microchips the year they were invented, and about radioactivity, and even about the health benefits of washing hands and drinking clean water. All scientific discoveries are an investment in the future, and those four I just mentioned have at this point touched nearly every single person on the planet, just like the above list may well do in the future.
There isn’t strong evidence that the things you mentioned are actually going away, why do you believe it’s true? Women and minorities are getting more justice and fair treatment than they have in the past. People treating each other well is subjective, and it’s arguable how well they ever did in the past. But murder, violent crime, property crime and hate crime rates have all gone down for the past ~40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States Happiness is also subjective, but take a look at the Human Development Index and note how all 66 countries in the list on this page have a positive year-over-year growth rate. All of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
Sorry, I'm not buying it anymore. More than likely, none of that is going to help me or anyone I know from struggling just a little more each year.
Another angle is if I struggle and work hard, what rewards accrue to others, and what do I get in return? The ROI on effort seems to be dwindling cause fakes are crowding out the real hard workers. And the buyers (ie wealthy investors) cant seem to tell the difference between expertise and bald faced lies. (I blame social media and rise of influencers for this, a bunch of fancy graphics and a iphone and now you know the 1 real secret the life long scientists have been holding back to our fatloss/clear pores/million dollar a month business).. Then again it was the missteps of institutions that even gave influencers their chance (a little lack of integrity ruins it for all)
From the distribution chart it seems most of the US stock market is owned via IRAs/401Ks/defined benefits and insurance versus individual accounts. [1]
Those evil corporate landlords that drive up rents? Well, likely they are acting on behalf of former hardworking teachers of Canada. Sure there is skimming involved but a bulk is going toward to teacher's retirement. [2]
Of course mileage may vary whether this helps how one feels.
[1] https://i.insider.com/5746013852bcd044008c527e?width=1200for...
[2] Why Canada’s Teachers Run an Investment Firm in Singapore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HXcT_xlLB0
As the meme goes, ¿Porque no lo dos?
Sure tech progress is cool, but it's hard to care when I feel more isolated from my community than ever, the world feels "angry", and in many important ways my life feels much worse off than just a few years ago.
The meme about "but living standards doubling every X years!" is little comfort when you can't feel any of those impacts - not to mention that the material is scarcely the only thing that matters for human happiness.
Most of the HN audience is likely at self-actualization stage where its going to be hard for society to help double life standards when every one's such standard is decided in such a deeply personal way for each individual. [1] It's also going to be really hard to measure progress on this front at a societal level.
[1] The importance of Maslow's hierarchy of needs
https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/the-importance-of-ma...
But. The past 5+ years have not been kind to the general arc of progress, particularly in already-developed countries in the West, and the US most of all. There has been genuine, real backsliding across the board on a variety of measures. And it's important to acknowledge that, too.
Here's the link to view the photos by income:
Compared with historical photos, the narrower scope of dollar-street photos might be less fun? Or not - it's a richly textured image set. Deep linking the dollar-tree site could give richer follow-up context. Perhaps paired guesses of income and location, might quickly teach their relative salience?
[1] https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/about? [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34559867
And when compared to the present, media narrative driven present its hard to see the improvements happening across the global population.
It helps me put stuff in perspective - of course mileage may var (and maybe it's just helping me delude myself into getting out a funk but it works!).
[1] Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo
[2] See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income - Anna Rosling Rönnlund https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4L130DkdOw