Those living the longest are those born 75-85 years ago. Later generations will have to wait to assess how it ended for them.

Gen X and early millenials are already doing worse than boomers did at that age...

https://now.tufts.edu/2026/03/09/why-arent-americans-living-...

I could afford to put a roof over my head and food on my plate easier ten years ago than today.

Sure big screen TVs have progressed, but let's not ignore that the changes of the world are regressive for some.

This is the problem in the discussion. Many on HN don't remember what it was like to buy a house in 2010, so they assume it hasn't gotten (far) worse. It has.

Or, they already have a house/mortgage and thus do not know how much worse it has gotten. I.e. housing costs as a % of your take home salary.

You are right. But there is also the stress for the low and middle class and there horrible conditions of the poorest countries.

Not so sunshiny when you think about the millions of people struggling to have a meal each day.

Global extreme poverty has fallen dramatically over the past two centuries. The extreme poverty rate, currently defined by the World Bank as living on less than $2.15 per person per day (adjusted for purchasing power), has dropped from around 60% of the world's population in 1950 to under 10% today.

That people should be happy over this may seem obvious to commenters shuffling about charts and research papers. But ordinary people do not look at their living situation and feel overwhelmingly thankful on a daily basis that they're not living in a horrible shack eating nothing, like many people 100 years ago. They're looking at their immediate parents. Neither of them were likely to starve, or die prematurely, or be affected by many of the most horrible things that wiped out people for millions of years. And yet, people are still worried that what was seen decades, not centuries, ago is unattainable. Maybe most people aren't likely to be homeless, but that precarious threshold is getting closer than it used to be. There's less of a safety margin for most things.

You arw right.

But precisely that fact made life much less stressful than today: it was normal to be poor, it was normal to die young.

> If anyone feels negative, I recommend seeing a psychologist.

Telling everyone that disagrees with you to see a psychologist is certainly something. The delusions of grandeur may make your statement quite ironic, heh.

I could read this as black comedy.

"Take him to a psychologist" was standard playbook in soviet block to silence dissent. Everyone knows of the gulag archipelago but just declaring someone insane was part of the toolkit.

>Infant mortality lowest it has ever been in the history of man

But there are people ruling us that literally do this, and don't give me the "muh conspiracy", we have proof now, there are pictures and videos and literal proof in those E files.

Plus we have our countries supporting another country murdering hundreds of thousands of children.

Obviously the mods will delete this comment because duh, but for the short time it's here, the things I'm talking are facts and you value the wrong things.

>we live the longest

Does it feel like winning to be stressed and anxious until you're 90 instead of having meaning and going out at 75?

>I have electricity

... I don't know what to say to that, seriously.

>I can talk with friends all over the planet for free, instantly

Yet we have fewer and fewer real friends we care to meet

>I can get to anywhere on the planet within a day

You can't be in two places at the same time, how can this be an argument?

>There is no reason for anyone not to feel exceptionally optimistic about the future these days.

MF they're literally trying to start WW3 wtf are you talking about?

>If anyone feels negative, I recommend seeing a psychologist.

It feels like a passage from Thus Spoke Zarathustra if it was written today, it's crazy how this reads like a "last man" manifesto.

Truly a dystopian comment, I hope you can eventually open your eyes.

Humans seem to be wired to weigh negative news much more strongly than positive news.

(The most plausible hypothesis I’ve found for this is that bad news - fire, predators nearby - has historically been much more likely to kill you than good news to benefit you, so we are descended from people who over-weighed bad news, and survived to reproduce.)

Modern media seems to really lean into this. All takes on everything are The Worst Possible Take. I heard Twitter described yesterday as “gain of function research for takes”. It’s not that the takes have to be bad, they just have to provoke a strong reaction, and bad news just gets a stronger reaction in humans.

“Cure for death found - social security bankrupt!!”

We have become more anti-fragile: and good things are way more likely to benefit us than before, and bad things less likely to harm us. Eventually we will evolve into this, but it will take literally generations!

Anyway, given people’s tendency to give bad news more weight, and given that most media is strongly negative, it is no wonder that people can come to believe that everything is terrible and that we are all doomed and that humanity has never had it worse. This seems absolutely ridiculous to me, comically so, but it seems almost tautological to many people. And telling them that things are actually great can seem like an attack!!!!!

If people don’t carefully curate their media environment, it is almost inevitable that they’ll become negative about the future. I don’t know what to do about this in general, but I know that I have to be very careful about what I consume. (And be gentle toward people who have been harmed by consuming too much negative for too long. I don’t think a psychologist can help though!)

Oh, oh, one of the best things I've ever read on this topic is: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/reading-the-news-is-t...

I should submit this to HN, in fact. It doesn't seem to have ever been submitted.

Looks like you did! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48686167 (in case anyone is interested)

Ha, yes, I really ought to have linked to that here. Thanks for doing that!

> Humans seem to be wired to weigh negative news much more strongly than positive news.

We are. It is much easier to be negative than positive.

Ah yes ! You should have said that to the 10 000 people who died while trying to migrate to another country, due to drone wars, financial crisis and climate change. [1] And you should also have said that to the Congolese children who died while mining for the natural resources used to produce components for the AI datacenters. And yes, the future we're living in is wonderful for the 50 millions slaves all around the world to build things we don't really need. [2]

Perhaps they should have seen a psychologist. When we'll lose our jobs due to AI, we'll all have plenty of time to go to psychologist, indeed.

[1] : https://www.iom.int/fr/news/2024-ete-lannee-la-plus-meurtrie... [2] : https://news.un.org/fr/story/2025/12/1157994

Cool, compared to what?

Nobody is saying "everything is exactly perfect for every person on earth."

There's never been a time in history when that was true and there never will be a time when that will be true.

The point is you live in the most comfortable/easy/least violent/most democratic/longest lifespan/best healthcare/best technology/best educated/etc. time to be alive in all of human history.

On top of that, if you're on this website, according to similarweb you're one of the highest income and most educated people on the planet (you're the 1%).

So you're likely in the 0.005% luckiest humans to ever live, and yet you're pessimistic because some media channel preyed upon your empathy or fears of change to capture your attention so they can monetize it selling ads for toilet bowl cleaner.

The truth is some people just have a negative emotional disposition. Others have genuine issues in their lives they need to change. In all cases there are actions, medications and therapies for you. Seek help.

Pretending you're so virtuous as to care about all the worlds problems and yet also powerless to do anything about them is simply a giant excuse to never actually do anything but complain and contribute nothing to humanity.

> Nobody is saying "everything is exactly perfect for every person on earth."

Really? Because what OP said, it sounded similar:

>> If anyone feels negative, I recommend seeing a psychologist. There is no reason for anyone not to feel exceptionally optimistic about the future these days!

Incorrect statement. Please read again, and work on reading comprehension.

This is the way. Exceptionally well put.

Thank you for schooling me. I'll tell my family in Algeria that they should be happy to live in the most comfortable and democratic time in all of human History and tell them to see a psychologist. I'll also tell the refugees I host at home for free(taking legal risks), that they should be happy to have access to the best education and best technology. Perhaps I should go to therapy indeed. I'm sure the police will stop harassing me due to my skin color. I'll tell them that I'm the 1%.

You sound like you're from EU, well, there are plenty of Syrians, maybe you should try to talk to some of them. It's cheaper than a psychologist.

So your family would prefer to be illiterate subsistence farmers dying in war at age 40 in 1960s Algeria? Or maybe they'd prefer to be illiterate subsistence farmers in two-tier French colonial Algeria, working as landless servant day laborers in the 1920s? Or maybe illiterate subsistence farmers in pre-colonial Algeria? Maybe a career in pre-modern Saharan animal husbandry sounds appealing? You can do all of that today no problem if that life was so much better.

The refugees you're hosting would much rather be refugees today (with actual legal rights in most developed countries) than refugees during any point in history, where they'd be more likely to end up slaves. There was never a time when being a refugee was a fun luxury experience.

Re: police harassing you, please tell me a time when humans weren't racist and were less racist than they are on average today?

Again, as I already said, yes everything isn't exactly perfect for everyone everywhere. My point is things are the best they've ever been for the vast majority of us. And most of humanity is working on improving things every day through the incentive system of modern global markets, and doing so successfully.

> So your family would prefer to be illiterate subsistence farmers dying in war at age 40 in 1960s Algeria? Or maybe they'd prefer to be illiterate subsistence farmers in two-tier French colonial Algeria, working as landless servant day laborers in the 1920s? Or maybe illiterate subsistence farmers in pre-colonial Algeria?

Perhaps genuinely. It’s at the very least regularly observable that less educated, less ambitious individuals living closer to traditional lifestyles are happier and more content.

Being African doesn't mean being less educated or less ambitious, nor living closer to "traditional lifestyle" whatever it is supposed to mean.

After trying to school me about my country, you know try to school me about my own family... My great-father fought against France during the war in 60s. My mother grew up during the algerian civil war. One of the refugee I had at home was reduced in slavery in 2015 (he was 17).

You want a time when humans were less racist ? Well.. I don't know.. Perhaps few years ago when far-right racist parties in Europe made up less than 30% in votes.

> If anyone feels negative, I recommend seeing a psychologist. There is no reason for anyone not to feel exceptionally optimistic about the future these days!

This is your point and I don't agree. Saying things are the best they've been is wrong. Things are the best for you. Not for "the vast majority of us". It is the best for the small minority. And no. It's not improving every day. In my first comment, I posted links with number of slaves all around the world and migrants dying, growing year after year.

Please, understand that while you feel optimistic, the majority of us, don't. Saying that we should see a psychologist is just rude. It seems that you are unable to understand other people feelings, thus, I would recommend you to see a psychologist.

When it crashes, it's going to be bad.

You can't leverage yourself on an entire economy (the world's largest as of this writing) and not deliver the corresponding amount of value. This is exactly what AI's bubble is likely to do.

Nice cherry picked stats.

> There is no reason for anyone not to feel exceptionally optimistic about the future these days!

Yes, there are. You're obviously in a bubble.

> If anyone feels negative, I recommend seeing a psychologist. There is no reason for anyone not to feel exceptionally optimistic about the future these days!

"European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis" [0]

"Nearly a quarter of the world’s nations are going through democratic backsliding, or autocratization, in 2025, and six out of the ten new autocratizing countries identified in the 2026 Democracy Report are in Europe and North America. Among them are large and influential countries like Italy, the United Kingdom, and the USA, according to the report authored by a team led by Professor Staffan I Lindberg at the V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg. The U.S. democracy is currently in a much faster deterioration process than any other democracy in modern times." [1]

"Based on current trends, progress against extreme poverty will come to a halt. As we’ll see, the number of people in extreme poverty is projected to decline, from 831 million people in 2025 to 793 million people in 2030. After 2030, the number of extremely poor people is expected to increase." [2]

Reasonable minds may of course differ about the future and all the problems and opportunities that lies ahead of us, but simply proclaiming there's "no reason" not to be "exceptionally optimistic" about the future, and recommending any skeptics to see a psychologist instead, is hard to classify as anything but a thought-terminating cliché. A society with such a mindset will find itself very ill prepared to solve a multitude of real and mounting challenges that require concerned minds and collective action.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/26/europe-h...

[1] https://www.gu.se/en/news/democratic-backsliding-reaches-wes...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/end-progress-extreme-poverty

My generation can't afford to own homes nor have children and the already pithy value of our labour is being outsourced to cheap foreign labour while the cost of food and basic living shoots into the stratosphere

But at least we have iPhones

People in the past raised children with much less income. My grandparents had their family of four live in a studio apartment.

Our expectations for what our life should be have just increased even more rapidly than our ability to pay for it.

This is actually very interesting and a proof of how well we have it. Many today expect to have children without lifting a finger and without sacrificing anything, and as soon as cost or housing becomes cumbersome, they just give up in despair.

As you say, rewind 100 years, and the child would take up all the time and become the entire purpose of your life, while living on 20 m² in many western countries.

If it worked then, it works now. Just man up, re-prioritize (if you really want a child that is, and not just a toy) and get on with it.

And, let's not forget that thanks to technology and the enormously positive developemtn of the world, the ones of us who do not want a child, can choose not to, while still enjoying life, and not be constrained by not having little workers on the farm. Truly life is good!

I dare you to afford a studio appartment and two kids with a single salary today.

And all of that was accomplished without AI! Not all advances are equivalently beneficial as of course you know, and all come with tradeoffs. Not everyone is willing to accept those tradeoffs, especially without being asked.

Parent is concerned about the reduction of independence heralded by centralizing control, wealth inequality, destruction of digital commons and other real downsides!

I read “Enlightenment Now” and it is full of beautiful graphs of quality of life over time improving. More GDP, less hunger, longer life spans.

There was one odd graph. It showed that rising GDP lead to more happiness in every country except one: the USA.