I stopped checking the news every day. Usually once every few weeks. You might think that this would lead to me being less informed about the world but I actually don't feel that way, even as my intake is still decreasing. Anything big will be highly visible and you'll see on many platforms (arguably this is news, but you all know what I mean) and people will be talking about it. I'll then look it up and read about it to get some information but don't let my life revolve around things I can't change or influence. Generally I feel a lot less stressed and happier. Around elections I read up a bit more to catch up but that's about it. There's just so much going on all the time that there's always going to be things to report but the difference is if that information can help me in any way or if that information is actionable. By getting the news late you'll also get it once there's a bit more clarity around the thing, often helping you actually understanding it.
Certainly there are downsides too, but for me this has been beneficial. I just don't need my news to be scary TikTok (which I also refuse to use) and having my attention running on high at all times. It's too much for me to handle. YMMV
I don't, I don't want to be caged in a bubble of happy in ignorance while the world burns.
I want to know just how corrupt, vial and inhumane people can be so I can do everything in my power to not be that way and do what I can to improve this world how ever minute that may be.
What an odd perspective. Personally, I find hearing about awful people, injustices and atrocities, etc. to be highly de-motivating. I want to save a world less when I plunge deep into a well of knowledge about the people that don't deserve to be saved.
And vice-versa, when I learn about uplifting things — selfless people doing things to help others, people striving to invent new technologies and medicines that keep our world going one more day, preventing us from tipping over into some apocalypse or another — I find myself more motivated to help others as well, because I can imagine that I am helping those good people. And also, I don't have to imagine — those people are on my side! If I have a goal for positive change related to one of these issues, news about progress with those issues tells me that I wouldn't be alone in solving these problems; that there will be people there to work with, people to ally with and collaborate with, people that massively increase the chance of changing the world!
Besides the motivational angle, though: "the world is burning" news is basically information-free. For almost all adults who haven't been living in a cave, such news causes no Bayesian update. Growing up, you learn about a few of the worst atrocities ever committed — the dictators, the serial killers, etc. Once you know these, you can derive the pattern of thinking behind them, an understanding of the base impulses of humanity at its darkest. You don't need constant new examples of the pattern to remind you that it continues to happen. You can assume that it continues to happen. (If you know this and you still feel obsessively compelled to expose yourself to such information — well, there's a name for that.)
Whereas, "good news" is frequently useful news. A new medicine? You or a family member might live longer taking it! Solar panels are cheaper now? Hey, maybe you can afford them yourself now! There's currently a big grassroots push to treat tuberculosis in developing nations? Sounds like something still small enough that a retweet could actually help it happen! And also sounds like you should slightly update in favor of those nations becoming more developed and being a place you should take a vacation to one day!
Everyone already knows that a lot of the world sucks. The important question is how to make it better, but reading bad news stories won't help answer that.
Yes, but on the other hand seeing an article about how "European rivers (were) restored" also let us know that the charities we donate to actually do make a significant impact.
Does continual exposure to bad things people do really help in your admirable desire to improve the world? I'd think that reading a couple of history books would suffice and then just getting on with making the world better.
Our goal should be to have a realistic picture of the world, not one that is negatively or positively biased. Due to the incentives of news and social media, coverage is overwhelmingly negative. If your goal is objectivity, it's rational to correct for that bias and avoid negative news. Most of it isn't personally actionable anyway, unless you're a journalist or state-level decision maker.
I'm not advocating for burying one's head in the sand. I think it's better to focus one's information diet on things that happened months or years ago, where there will be higher quality books and articles on the subject. You'll come away more informed and less outraged than the people debating about the latest headline trending on Twitter.
> bubble of happy in ignorance... do what I can to improve this world
That's actually the point of positive over negative news. It focuses on people doing constructive things, and the positive results happening, which makes it easier to have a constructive mindset yourself, to befriend those people, to participate in solutions, etc. The endless stream of negativity in the news, which is _artificially_ amplified, serves mostly to hide that stuff, because its lower effort to read and produces a kind of doom scrolling effect in people (i.e. to mindlessly search for and share the worst things in the world). That doesn't generally lead anyone to do anything positive.
The reality is no matter read we the news or not, there will be misery in the world. But also there will be things worth celebrating. And a healthy society celebrates good news. On the contrast, a globalized out of touch society obsesses over what they can't change, while people that need help are under their nose..
Note that this flight was using carbon-based fuel that emits CO2 and other biproducts, it was just synthetic fuel instead of being pumped out the ground. I think it's mostly a marketing puff piece for the aerospace industry.
You can try this newsletter: https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews/. It didn't have that particular story, but there are a lot of climate-related headlines.
Seems interesting! I wonder how they source their articles.
I chuckled to myself about the article on frogs with fangs [1]. I like the focus on discovery of a new species, but not exactly thrilled about fanged frogs’ existence.
I enjoy the idea but the implementation feels lacking: about half of these are statistics, which is on brand for gapminder, but using comparisons from several years past instead of 2022. Which makes it a bit less "news of 2023" and more "news of sometime in the past decade."
Not sure if they're framing it this way to exaggerate the improvement or because the data reported on isn't collected annually.
It's news _from_ 2023, not news about things that happened only in 2023. Things might have improved starting years ago but the research to show it wasn't finished until this year, so it's also about celebrating seeing progress and improvements.
Limiting the list to things improving only since 2022 seems unnecessarily restrictive and we'd miss a lot of positive and interesting news.
The other day I was discussing with a coworker about the impact of technology in our lives. He defended that tech has a net negative impact overall and that we should reduce the speed at which we develop tech, while I was defending the opposite. News like these prove my point. The problems of the world will be solved with better technologies and more investment on research.
You may be working with different definitions of "technology." Certainly there are fields which are primarily negative and should slow down, just not all of them because "technology" is an infinitely broad term.
Technology has only magnified and accelerated human vices. Being able to steal billions from investors has never been simpler.
It is the application of technology that needs to be improved. After all, technology does not give us anxieties, it's our own FOMO that causes us anxieties.
I'm going to give some speculative answers which may sound like science fiction. Take them with a grain of salt.
> How technology can stop the war?
Better technology can help countries to be more productive and less dependent on other countries. This would reduce tensions between countries and consequently reduce armed conflicts.
> Or decrease tensions between religion groups?
Tension between groups can be reduced by making people more aware about how people in the other group are really. For example, a Christian can change his mind about Muslims after spending time talking with a Muslim. With technology you can help people in different groups to understand better people in the other group.
Of course these are speculative answers, and technology has been proven to be highly unpredictable (people predicting that in 2020 there would be flying cars) so I know my predictions are probably false. But they are useful to understand how technology can help. On the other hand, history shows us that technology has helped consistently the (read the article posted here for an extensive list of example).
> Better technology can help countries to be more productive and less dependent on other countries.
More productive in producing weapons for invasion. If country will be more dependent - they will consider opportunity costs of going into the war. But here we are, with biggest war in Europe since ww2.
Looks like technology can only help people to create a more sophisticated ways to kill each other.
> Looks like technology can only help people to create a more sophisticated ways to kill each other.
If technology can help to create more sophisticated way to kill each other, it can also be used to create the defense against the same. Laser can be a killing weapon, or can also be used to shoot down drones.
And this is saying nothing about civilian application that save instead of killing each other.
> Better technology can help countries to be more productive and less dependent on other countries. This would reduce tensions between countries and consequently reduce armed conflicts.
Naive. Russia started a war once they became less dependent on other countries. Now they are using modern tech like cryptocurrency to circumvent sanctions.
> With technology you can help people in different groups to understand better people in the other group.
I’m laughing harder than when the blockchain lunatics claimed they were going to solve political corruption. Well at least they had some contrived “how” instead of just making a completely unexplained speculation.
A good list of things which shows that people strive to do better and that we all can work together for a better future.
Renewables investments exceeding fossil ones by 1.80 USD for every fossil dollar and many countries seeing strong renewable energy growth are my highlights from the list.
That world happiness is back to more than pre-pandemic levels was also a big surprise to me.
Yeah I’m skeptical of the happiness metric. Most people living their day to day lives would say things still feel a lot more “negative” than pre-pandemic
Reading the linked Guardian article, apparently happiness is still depressed in Western countries but the advances to reduce human misery across the globe is compensating this.
I used to follow Tank's Good News[1] each week for this type of thing, but it seems it stopped being updated. I am hoping the owner eventually brings it back one day.
I think that’s the hardest part of running a news site with a permanently positive bent: if you stop or even slow down, you leave a really deep emotional impact.
I totally respect the idea, but I would have so much trouble with that pressure.
this is the big one that affects many people, about half the population. We need answers more than ever. Obesity out control. Nothing seems to work, but these drugs offer a glimmer of hope, but I don't think they will solve the obesity epidemic completely.
While it is good that such drug exists, it could be a wrong path to fight disease. Instead of fixing the root cause: unhealthy food habits, it reduce symptoms. People will continue follow unhealthy lifestyle knowing they can get a pill later.
You can compare obesity with depression: both are psychological issues in most cases. It is easy to fight obesity - the person simply need to cut on calories, to get a healthy diet. However, it is really hard to do that on practice.
I generally agree that treating the symptoms will lead to people continuing get the majority of their calories from "junk food".
> unhealthy food habits
Fixing this will require systemic change, like 1) moving away from ultra-processed foods derived from cheap crops, 2) a ban on eye catching advertising for obviously unhealthy food, and 3) making well balanced and healthy food as cheap and assessable as unhealthy food.
Right now the debate is framed as an individual choice problem, but in my view it's a systemic public health problem like cigarettes. There needs to be regulation, from TV ads for Burger King to eye catching breakfast cereal boxes. If you manipulate human psychology with advertising and then hijack their biological mechanisms for sensing when they're full they don't really have a choice.
Healthy food is not expensive. Veggies, porridge, chicken - are affordable for everyone.
The issue is that ultra processed foods are engineered to be as addictive as possible. Fast sugars and starches with spices give fast response and provoke binge eating.
Chips are created and marketed so person will select them instead of bunch of carrots as snack. There are no sexy commercials starring raw veggies, unfortunately.
I post here every now and then about how effective a vegetable juice diet for 90 days is. Most people respond with hate and general info about how unhealthy it is supposedly.
At this point I have helped 4 adults (3 being 60+ yrs old) and myself try the diet. Even my own father.
Most can't do all 90 days for whatever reason. Every single person that has tried it for 30 days has lost about 25 lbs. The ones that tried it for 60 days lost 35-40 lbs.
Two of the seniors had blood tests done before and after the juice diet, both showed improved markers on EVERY single thing tracked, including blood sugar and A1C levels, even though they basically lived off the sugar in vegetables for 60 days.
Every single person agrees that vegetable juice plus meat would be the ideal diet for them long term after trying it.
Even with all that said, new people that year it says it doesn't sound healthy. If you told them your diet is 2-3 lbs of salad plus meat a day, they'd say ya that sounds healthy. If you tell them, hey, have 10 lbs of salad a day for 90 days, they'd say that sounds healthy but sounds too hard to eat that much. If you tell them, sure, why don't you juice it instead and make a gallon of juice, they'll say that doesn't sound healthy.
I think weight loss is very simple. It's just not easy. And it's not easy to decide to try. I begged my dad for 3 years to try 90 days of juice, after I tried. Finally he tries it, and is now a believer. My mom though, seeing his great blood test results, and seeing him lose 35 lbs and feel great, still isn't convinced she could give up pastries and bread and just live off salad (juice) for 90 days.
Heck, people will try hormone altering drugs before they try celary, carrot, beet, cucumber juice.
I'm a huge proponent for a produce-heavy diet, and I'm happy to hear your anecdotal experiences have been positive for yourself and others. However, I will say your statement, "If you tell them, hey, have 10 lbs of salad a day for 90 days, they'd say that sounds healthy but sounds too hard to eat that much." is untrue. I don't think anyone with a solid education in nutrition would say 10lbs of salad/day is healthy.
Can I ask what inspired you to go down the route of vegetable juice, vs other dietary changes? Rapid weight loss to the tune of 20lb+/month is rarely a good sign, except in the morbidly obese. Gradual, sustainable lifestyle changes tend to show good, healthy results in the short and long term.
Because I have had decades to eat a balanced diet and lose weight slowly. That is harder to sustain for a year for me, than having 1500 calories of vegetables juice for 90 days.
Once done, you've broken a lot of habits. If you can stay away from processed snacks and huge carb heavy meals, you keep the weight off.
Losing 35 lbs in 60 days is life changing for most people I think. After that it's easier to maintain a healthy diet imo. Keeping a healthy diet while watching yourself lose 4 lbs a month for a year is a lot harder for people... As we can see from everyone constantly expanding.
For every complex problem, there is a simple, easy and wrong answer.
Crash diets like this don't work. Sure you may lose pounds the week or two that you try it. But what happens in 6 months? A year? Highly unlikely to keep those pounds off.
Well, these people lost weight for 60 days that they did it. And if they then transition to eating vegetables and meat, they keep the weight off. Pretty obvious really.
I guess I didn't hear about that or ask. For them not to mention it I assume that being 30+ lbs overweight and heating junk food is detrimental to that to too, so it is either improved or stays the same from eating 10lbs of vegetable juice a day.
Gapminder's 'best of 2023', though always very welcome, features several plusses regarding EV batteries. I expect an alternative to personal EVs, group EVs (automated), will be upon by this time next, making the lesser green elements of batteries even greener.
The negativity you continually read about them is just the equivalent of "windmills kill birds", propaganda promoted by some of the worst people in the world, in order to maintain the level of death and destruction that they profit from.
Even separate from cars, the battery revolution driven by cars will likely be the second most important part of a carbon free grid after solar PV.
For the record, if that was pointed at my post, I am not being negative, on the contrary, I said I liked them. Powering EV's, and their usage, will be unrecognisable within a decade. The knee-jerk internet is universal, alive and kicking on hackernews. As is sarcasm - depending on who says it and who reads it.
Are electric bikes fully legal where you are? Limited tryout areas are dotted around my country. Expect fatal and semi-fatal incidents to follow exponentially; before helmets, fines, and licences catch up.
Here in France, you may ride an electric assistance bike that cuts off at 25 kmph as if it were a normal bike. No license, helmet, or insurance required. You may also ride on bike paths. Just like a regular old-fashioned bike.
For bikes with assistance above that, you need a license, the "light motorcycle" or whatever it's called. Also, insurance, helmet, and gloves, just for any "real" motorbike. These things cost as much as a full-on motorcycle, so I don't know who buys them.
Anyway, I haven't heard of any increase in injuries or fatalities related to the uptake of electrical bikes that doesn't seem linked to the overall increase in cycling since covid.
Increases. And many more to come. Accident damage caused to riders of motorbikes is overwhelmingly more severe than car drivers. We can confidently presume similar ratio of e-scooters, especially as more often than not helmets and body protection is rarely worn. Nothing out of the ordinary saying or seeing this.
That link talks about e-scooters, I was talking about electric bicycles. Is there a similar regulation for those? I have a friend living in London and I don't recall him saying anything about bikes, but did say personal e-scooters were illegal at the time.
In reply to your other comment, I'm not surprised riders of e-scooters have more injuries. Those things are extremely unstable and have next to no brakes. Quite different from bikes, which have better handling characteristics.
Also, the kinds of e-bikes that don't require a license in France only go faster then a regular bike when going uphill. On flat terrain, they're similar. So I don't see why there would be more injuries per mile traveled. The ones that have assistance to a higher speed are a different thing, and expect to see the same kind of injuries as for mopeds.
2023, no mention of AI (which I consider hugely positive; AI that is, not lack of mention). Still, I appreciate the creativity. It's a great list, some stuff I didn't know about. #96 (Azerbaijan/Armenia relations breakthrough) seems like really squinting to see a glass half full considering all of 2023. Here's to more in 2024, including breakthroughs in seemingly intractable and stupid conflicts!
We are incredibly wealthy by historical standards (see also Gapminder's long term trends linked from the OP https://www.gapminder.org/facts/improvements/) because all of the jobs of yore have disappeared, many times over, from "excessive" automation and other productivty increases. More please!
The point of life is not to have a job. Although exactly what the point is after that is a religious question and hotly contested. Although uncomfortable in the short term, there is simply no point people doing work that could be profitably automated. There is great benefit to be had from abundance.
So far pretty much all the economic upside has gone to the masses. The wealthy have much higher nominal wealth and no way to use it for themselves that hasn't existed in all of history. In fact, the lack of modern pyramids like what was built in Egypt suggests they're using resources even more consistently for the common good instead of monumental waste (heh).
> (which I consider hugely positive; AI that is, not lack of mention).
Hugely positive for whom? A big mega corporation? The average human being stands to benefit minimally, but in the long run things don't like too good if everything is up for automation.
When you start treating "first person with ethnic background X in space" as "good news", that's how you arrive at lots of effort, time and money being spent on pursuing objectives that have zero value.
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
Imagine being born as a little girl in a country where women haven’t had equal rights to men. Now if you see a woman from your country doing something huge (like go to space), it raises the bar or what you believe you can become. Not zero value
What if you were denied opportunities because of your race or gender or something else? Wouldn't you want to know that there barrier is now gone?
(Ignore the Saudi case, since this is almost certainly a cynical gesture to foreigners so we can be more accepting of MBS as being actually a really great guy after all considering what he's doing for women)
You are assuming that the only reason Barnawi went to the ISS is because of her ethnicity. I looked her up, and turns out she is conducting experiments on ISS in her field of biomedical research.
You might counter that she was selected by the wealthy Saudi authorities as a PR stunt.
That's probably also true to some extent, but how is that different than the than how space travel was used for PR/patriotic purposes in the US and Russia for in the past?
A lot of space travel throughout it's history is openly about selling aspiration.
>You are assuming that the only reason Barnawi went to the ISS is because of her ethnicity.
Never said that. Just pointing out what you treat as a positive reward signal matters if you want to optimize for the goal that's actually intended here.
> what you treat as a positive reward signal matters if you want to optimize for the goal that's actually intended here.
What is this singular goal that you are implying should be intended here? The absolutely pure pursuit of science? That's never been the goal of space travel, even from it's inception.
> When you start treating "first person with ethnic background X in space" as "good news", that's how you arrive at lots of effort, time and money being spent on pursuing objectives that have zero value.
Reducing barriers so that anyone can pursue their dreams seems like a worthwhile and humanistic goal.
I do, however, question the use of the label "ethnic background" because everyone is of some ethnic group.
>Reducing barriers so that anyone can pursue their dreams seems like a worthwhile and humanistic goal.
Sure, and what you treat as a positive reward signal towards this goal is important. If you treat having 10% more of X in field Y, as a positive, then why not 20% or better yet 50%? It leads to artificial results.
You don’t think it’s noteworthy and “positive news” that a woman from a country that wouldn’t let women drive just a little while ago is sending a female astronaut to the ISS? I get being irritated by weird and hyperbolic culture war nonsense, but this is pretty freaking amazing IMO.
While KSA has a great many problems - especially in regards to human rights <cough MBS having people murdered, cough cough>, this is a positive sign that maybe those sorts of attitudes aren’t permissible in polite company on a global stage anymore.
You didn’t upset me, I just think you’re full of it and I’m telling you so because clearly someone in your upbringing failed you. Your response is a low effort response because you don’t actually have a point. It is standard reactionary nonsense, which is surprising to see here but I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprised. “Hurr durr, DEI bad, amirite?” That’s you, that’s what you sound like. Meanwhile, literally one of the most monstrous and backwards countries for women’s rights in the world has put a woman in space and is trying to modernize.
Tell me exactly how this is encouraging efforts that have “zero value?” You don’t think Saudi Arabia entering (albeit hesitantly) the 21st century is an achievement unto itself? You don’t think it’s noteworthy or admirable just because it’s not “boots in moon dust” or whatever technical achievement you think is more important? Please. Take your 1930s mentality back to where it came from.
The future isn’t only for men of European ancestry.
That list should be titled "100 things that sound great when read by a UN bureaucrat in front of other UN bureaucrats but don't affect your life in any meaningful way".
I'm just putting words into ancestors post, but my guess is that it's disingenuous to congratulate yourself for solving a man made problem. Poverty doesn't have to be a given unless you ascribe to specific world views. You could solve a disease caused by poverty, or you know.. solve poverty so that the need to cure this disease is zero.
Poverty isn't a man made problem. It's the default state of nature, which was true for most humans in the history of our species. We can't solve it overnight. It takes decades of gradually increasing a society's wealth from subsistence farming to full industrialization. It's definitely possible to do it more quickly than we did in the Western world (~200 years), as evidenced by the progress that China and India have made toward eliminating extreme poverty in the last 20 years. But it's naive to think that we can just snap our fingers and solve poverty for the rest of the world. In the mean time, it totally makes sense to try and alleviate the suffering of people in poverty in whatever ways we can.
Focusing on the good is an important step towards better mental health. That said, good and bad are in the eye of the beholder. For example, Iran and Saudi Arabia restoring ties is likely very bad news for Israel.
> Iran and Saudi Arabia restoring ties is likely very bad news for Israel
While geopolitics creates the strangest bedfellows, this is probably an attempt to play China off against the USA/Japan as well as shake a few geopolitical trees. I doubt some handshakes are going to resolve centuries of mutual hatred and Sunni/Shia supremacy between Saudi and Iran. Saudi has mountains of cash but needs a security guarantor. The USA has played that role for some decades but is losing interest so Saudi is maneuvering to regain American interest or gain another guarantor. They may be betting that diplomatic excursions with Iran ostensibly brokered by China will lead to the USA or Japan stepping in to prevent China gaining greater influence in the region, and if not maybe China would work out for them.
Hey, look at it this way, the Yemen civil war is still ongoing, and if they are it's likely because Iran and Saudi Arabia are still funding it, which would conflate to eat least a cold war between the sides even if there's some surface level of democracy forming.
And democracy is bad news for autocrats. I'm not saying that miners have a moral stain, far from it. Simply that a thing that is good for you and yours may be a significant net negative for the world / population at large. I can certainly empathise for those displaced by a change in geopolitics/economics etc that can significantly harm a subset of the greater whole, it won't stop my resolve if it's truly for the betterment of the world.
I thought that Saudi Arabia and Israel were on the verge of a rapprochement before October 7th? The offer on the table was F35's and access to the Tempest program in the UK in exchange for normalization. This would have put the Saudis right on top vs. Iran.
> Iran and Saudi Arabia restoring ties is likely very bad news for Israel.
It is bad news for the West. Iran will stop after restoring Muslim control of Israel in much the same way that Germany stopped after restoring German control of the Sudetenland.
Reading through this it seems like a fucking joke: we have an amazing breakthrough in cancer rates not seen in 20 years (35% down).
We should have it down to basically zero by now. This so many resources poured into it.
The same with all the better malaria treatment - great but shouldn't we have fixed this problem by now?
2023 could have been a great year with advances in AI solving protein folding, but it turned out to be the same usual shit: dictators who get other people to kill so they can get rich.
How can you claim to know a priori how many resources need to be thrown at a problem to solve it?
Cancer is one of the most complex diseases in existence. Eliminating it requires sci-fi levels of technology in areas like molecular biology, gene editing, immunology, and pharmacology. I would say we have made a remarkable amount of progress given that we didn't know what DNA was 70 years ago.
We already know how to eliminate malaria, which we have successfully done in many developed countries. The underlying problem is poverty and lack of infrastructure in developing countries, which isn't trivial to solve either.
Perfectionism is the wrong attitude to take here. All progress happens through incremental improvement.
I wish there was a way to find positive stories like this without having to wade through the increasingly negative swamp that is news today.