Is The World Becoming A Better Place?

Barnardot

@JulesKorngold ;science, technology, and medicine. The second side argues that the world is not becoming a better place because of the problems that still exist in the world, such as poverty, hunger, and war.

Well I reckon you hit the nails on the heads with that one because I reckon that one pushes the other. When you analize it sure we have poverty and hunger and war but the thing is that we have less poverty hunger and war in fact a lot less. And the thing is us being humans and always being different we always will have thos things to some degree but its all the science and medicines and technology that has given us the way to be better and get rid of the bad things more and more

Dreamer

Argument Topic: Worse off. The pandemic really set back progress.

The poorest countries in the world really lost a lot to the pandemic.  It is really a shame the anti-vaxx movement is so powerful.

"25 years wiped out in 25 weeks: Pandemic sets the world back decades Progress on global health and the worldwide economy has regressed, Gates Foundation report finds."

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/14/gates-report-pandemic-world-setbacks-414934

 Democracy is in retreat. Climate change is looming closer and closer. Nuclear proliferation and super-intelligent AI are becoming bigger and bigger existential threats. Let's face it the human race is almost certainty doomed.

John_C_87

@JulesKorngold

The world is getting worse it is going to be destroyed by law of nature and there is nothing to sensibly do about it other than leave. Well, that is other then don't rush the process.

Barnardot

@John_C_87 ;The world is getting worse it is going to be destroyed by law of nature

Well I have to agree to agree with you there because thats what will happen and could all be in the blink of the eye such is nature but I reckon its going to be more like what TS Elliot said who almost is toilets back wards but he said the world will end with not a bang but with a wimper. And thats what God said when he said that the meek shall in herit the earth. So in the end there will not be any more red necks and rag heads but just a bunch of wimps.

John_C_87

And thats what God said when he said that the meek shall in herit the earth
Meaning the meek will chose to stay behind as the world ends...then becoming to late to move forward?

MayCaesar

Your argument for things not becoming better appears to be erroneous. The fact that there are still some problems in the world merely suggests that the world is not a perfect place. The fact that not all problems have been solved yet does not imply anything about relative goodness of the world at different time points.

A more sound (and common) argument in favor of the claim that the world is not becoming a better place focuses on negative aspects of the technological evolution or the societal trends. For instance, "helicopter parenting" on the West makes it much more difficult for kids to grow into independent, capable and responsible adults; someone who is a parent desperately wanting his kid to grow into one may see this factor as trumping all the positive aspects of the modern world and say that the world is a worse place today than it was, say, 50 years ago.

My personal perspective is, it makes little sense to talk about the world as a whole being or not being a good place: the world is what it is and it does not intrinsically have any goodness or badness (which are purely human philosophical constructs). One can, however, say that the world is or is not becoming a better place FOR HIM.

Take me. I am a tech junkie and such developments as Google,  GPT-4 or self-drivng cars are a really big deal for me. Almost to the point of me preferring to live in Shanghai today to living in Miami (my favorite city in the world) in 2000. From my perspective, the world is becoming exponentially a better place before our very eyes: we are literally watching history rapidly in the making, as someone living for 14,000 years before would have.

It is a very different story for some old farmer in the mountains of West Virginia who values peace, quiet, small local community and tradition above all else. To him all this technology is an intrusion on his lifestyle, and the friends with wom he used to sit at a campfire exchanging stories now spend their evenings watching Netflix at home or visiting their kids in California.

The most objective way in which I can say that the world is becoming a better place is that the space of available opportunities continuously expands. You want to live like your ancestors did? Go into the woods, find like-minded people and build a community. Interested in playing around with robots? Found a robotic startup. Want to expose yourself to a different culture? Hop on a plane and go across the globe. There are virtually no things that you could do 100 years ago and cannot now (although there are some things that are much harder to do than back then given the absence of old technology, infrastructure, etc.), and there are gazillions of things that you could not do 100 years ago and can now.

Just think about what is happening now. You are looking at a LCD/LED screen reading something a guy thousands miles away from you wrote a few hours ago, wrote by hitting the tiny screen of his phone with his index finger (for he is terrible at phone typing) while chilling out under the sun waiting for the tires on his car to be replaced. If you told that to someone back in 1950, they would say that, even as a sci-fi scene, this is too far out there. And you are telling me that this world we are living in is worse because... kids play too many video games? Or because people eat too much food and get obese? Come on.

John_C_87

@MayCaesar
Give me a minute I have to stop laughing...................

Do you know the difference in speed betwen the computer communication and telegraph are minimal.... we now have a picture now. That is a small gain. It is the number of wires and satilites connecting us now, what is left unsaid is the cost of such a small gain was made becuased more men died putting up the telegraph, power, and phone lines around America then in all Wars America had lost entering every war including our own Civil War.

I am optimistic that things can get better by improvements on a more perfect state of the union, but it will not ever come if the state of the union is not addressed as imperfect. The state of the union to United States Constitution is a lot worse.

Barnardot

@John_C_87 ;Meaning the meek will chose to stay behind as the world ends...then becoming to late to move forward? @nomenclature

May be so but I reckon that of all the people in the world the meek will be the ones who dont go round with there heads in there bottoms and have a more balanced view of things and then start re building in a positive way. Imaging if the world ended with just a bunch of guys like no men cluter who will start making up conspiring theories about whats in the first seeds they plant and dissing governments when there aren't even any left any way. Any way the world will truly end in a bang in five minutes when they go round shooting each other then its all over red rover.

John_C_87

@Barnardot

The end of the earth has started and is not going to be in a blink of an eye it will take centuries, but the end is certain unless we as humans decide to move earth somehow. Things can be done to change the law of nature which will end the earth and apply a law of humanity that will be earths cause of death in a much shorter time frame. The whole truth though is the news of earth ending by law of nature is not what makes the world a worse place.

ControversalClient1

Argument Topic: I think that both sides of this argument have valid points. But…

The world had always had its cycles, and as the world develops faster ways to do everything, those cycles become more and more dramatic. Before the Great Depression everyone was wealthy. As threats of nuclear conflict grow, people need to realize that nuclear missives are almost never going to be touched. If one launches, the rest follow, so nobody launches them. With war in Ukraine it has already been pre determined that nuclear weapons will not be used. Climate change is not a threat at all, and I could go in for hours about that, but I won’t.

JulesKorngold

Argument Topic: It's Possible

@ControversalClient1

I disagree with the statement that nuclear missiles are almost never going to be touched. While it is true that there is a high risk of escalation if one nuclear missile is launched, it is not impossible that nuclear weapons could be used in a conflict.

In fact, there have been several close calls in the past where nuclear weapons have almost been used. For example, in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union was prepared to launch nuclear missiles against the United States if the US invaded Cuba. And in 1983, a Soviet early warning system mistakenly detected a US nuclear attack, and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov was only minutes away from ordering a retaliatory nuclear strike.

It is important to remember that nuclear weapons are not just weapons of war. They are also weapons of deterrence. The threat of nuclear retaliation is what has prevented major wars between the world's superpowers since World War II. However, if the threat of nuclear retaliation is removed, then the risk of nuclear war increases significantly.

The war in Ukraine is a reminder that even in the 21st century, nuclear weapons are still a major threat to global security. It is important to work to reduce the risk of nuclear war, and to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again.

With regards to the statement that nuclear weapons will not be used in the war in Ukraine, I believe that this is a premature conclusion. The war is still ongoing, and the situation is fluid. It is impossible to say with certainty what will happen in the future. However, I believe that it is important to be prepared for the possibility that nuclear weapons could be used, and to work to prevent this from happening.

John_C_87

@JulesKorngold

First Nuclear War is in fact Chemical Warfare, the threat to even use Chemical Warfare in combat is a violation of several treaties, there real is no such thing as a Nuclear War as all atomic reactions from bomb to missiles are based on chemical weaponry. Any threat in the past was not a threat of Nuclear War it was a threat to advance humanity into a Chemical War. "Enriched Uranium is a chemical."