luddites were right

And yet in the 200 years since human civilization has improved by every imaginable metric, in most cases by orders of magnitude. The difference between 2026 and 1826 is nearly incomprehensible. I suspect most people scarcely imagine how horrific the average life was in 1826, relatively speaking. And between then and now were the industrial revolution, multiple world wars, and generally some of the most terrible events, crooked politicians, and life changing technological forces. And here we are, mostly fine in most places.

I get there are many things happening today that are frustrating or moving some element of human life in negative or ambiguous directions, but we really have to keep perspective on these things.

Nearly every problem today is a problem with a solution.

The feelings of panic we have that things are going wrong are useful signals to help guide and motivate us to implement those solutions, but we really must avoid letting the doomerism dominate. Just because we hear constant negative news doesn't mean things are lost. Doesn't even mean things are bad.

It just means we have been hearing a lot of negative news.

This is what it looks like for progress to not be monotonically increasing.