As I’ve gotten older and learned more about what’s going on in the world, I’ve been shocked and dismayed at the problems that I see. To the point that I’ve had serious thoughts about avoiding having kids, much as I want them, because bringing them into this kind of world seems to be a disservice to them. I’m not alone; a good portion of every generation seems to go through this at some point. But let me tell you a story.
I have a friend, who I’ll call D. D’s father was a confirmed pessimist (though he would disagree with the label — according to him, he was just a realist). To him, everything was going wrong, and the world was headed to hell in a handbasket. And he had proof of it: he could pick up a newspaper or turn on a TV news show, any day of the week, and show you exactly why he believed that. (Apparently he hadn’t caught onto the fact that newspapers and news shows have a financial incentive to always give bad news.)
But D is a smart guy, and sees a lot more than he talks about. One day during such a rant, he asked his father, “Dad, are things getting better?”
His father stopped dead, and you could see him thinking hard, trying to find some evidence that it wasn’t. It went on for a noticeable length of time, then he reluctantly said, “yeah, son, it’s getting better.”
For many years, that story has given me hope. If even a well-informed life-long pessimist had to admit that things are getting better, then I could take it on faith that they must be. But recently I found this:
[…] The acceleration of progress can be measured in objective terms such as the amount of labor it takes to earn an hour of reading light. In 1997, with CF bulbs, it was half a second. In 1950, with incandescent bulbs, eight seconds. In 1880, with kerosene lamps, fifteen minutes. In 1800, with candles, six hours. In every decade various intellectuals keep saying that progress has stopped or is about to stop, but Ridley showed chart after chart chronicling constant improvement in everything we care about. Life expectancy is increasing by five hours a day. IQ keeps going up by three points a decade. Agriculture gets ever more productive, leaving more land to remain wild. Even economic inequality is decreasing, with poor countries getting rich faster than rich countries are getting richer.
On the subject of climate change, Ridley has a similar set of detailed charts showing that sea level has been rising slowly for a long time, but it is not accelerating. The same with the retreat of glaciers. Overall global warming is proceeding slower than was predicted. Humanity has been decarbonizing its energy supply steadily for 150 years as we progressed from wood to coal to oil to natural gas. A few years ago it was thought that only 25 years of natural gas was left, but with the invention of hydrofracking shale gas, the supply is suddenly 250 years worth, and it is a hugely cleaner source than coal. (Among nuclear innovations, Ridley is particularly intrigued by thorium reactors.) […]
Proof positive, in my opinion. Even if the mega-rich and their paid-for politicians drive the country into abject poverty, that will only screw things up for a few decades at most. Things are still getting better, and despite the constant bad news, the future is brighter now than at any time in the past, and every year it becomes more likely that it will continue to do so. No one can see past the technological singularity — that’s why it’s called that, after all — but once we reach it, there’s a very good chance that we’ll be able to stave off almost any possible physical disaster, and ride out the ones that we can’t.
At that point, the only threat to humanity will be humanity itself, but that’s an entirely different subject.