Cross-posting a 2023 Hacker News thread:
Everyone has different perspectives and values, so what do you personally think is the most important problem in the world right now? Is it something that one, or a group of early enthusiasts, can work on?
The original quote is from Aaron Swartz:
Life is short (or so I’m told) so why waste it doing something dumb? It’s easy to start working on something because it’s convenient, but you should always be questioning yourself about it. Is there something more important you can work on? Why don’t you do that instead? Such questions are hard to face up to (eventually, if you follow this rule, you’ll have to ask yourself why you’re not working on the most important problem in the world) but each little step makes you more productive.
Getting the GOP out of power and out of office in USA.
The bigger problem is Americans keep voting them in.
Capitalism is by far the biggest problem facing the planet. It is also the root cause of many other problems, such as war and climate change. But the associated problem that everyone can work on is a lack of class consciousness. Step 1: Educate yourself about the principles of exploitation in capitalism. Step 2: Educate others.
And for the sake of completeness, what resources would you recommend to a beginner?
I started by asking myself, who have the capitalists revealed, through words and deeds, to be their greatest enemies? Then I started trying to understand those conflicts which made me realize that some of the people I was scared to listen to are actually intelligent, well-read, and earnest.
Ah, David Harvey’s Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism is very good for beginners. Alternatively, there are also some good videos. For example, Richard Wolff - The Game is Rigged.
Animal agriculture is a massive contributor to some of the largest problems in the world
It’s at least ~15-17% of climate emissions and is enough to make us miss climate targets on its own even if fossil fuels are immediately stopped
~73% of the world’s antibiotics go to animal agriculture, leading to antibiotic resistance diseases. It’s directly attributed to at least 50% of all zoonetic diseases since 1940
It’s one the most dangerous and exploitative industries to work in. There are multiple human right watch reports on working conditions in just the US (“When We’re Dead and Buried, Our Bones Will Keep Hurting” and Blood, Sweat, and Fear). And this is not limited to the US, here’s just a handful of reporting from The Guardian Revealed: exploitation of meat plant workers rife across UK and Europe, ‘The whole system is rotten’: life inside Europe’s meat industry
The rates of factory farming globally are far higher than most people think. It’s around 74% of all globally farmed land animals, and 90% of total global farmed land and marine animals. It’s around ~99% for the US. The number of animals slaughtered each year is immense at ~80 billion land animals / year, >100 total animals per year. The sheer number of individuals who go through that makes the level of suffering hard to parallel
And that’s just some of the harm the industry does, but I don’t want to ramble too long without talking about how to go about solving this
There is more we as individuals can do here than we can for 90% of other issues. With the laws of supply and demand, simply reducing our collective demand makes the industry smaller. That’s doable at the induvidal level: simply reducing (and ideally eliminating) our individual meat, dairy, etc. consumption can have a real impact. This is more achievable than people think. For instance, Germany has seen a 12% decline in per capita meat consumption over the last ~10 years. We don’t need wait for any institutions to make changes before that can work by doing collective action
There are also some systemic changes we can push for in the near-medium future to help make that happen faster. For instance, just making plant-based foods the default tends to increase plant-based consumption by several orders of magnitude. NYC hospitals implemented plant-based defaults and made their plant-based consumption rate go up to 51% of meals and reduced the average cost of a meal by 59 cents. If that sounds interesting to anyone there are campaigns with real successes to get more institutions and companies to implement those. There groups like the Better Food Foundation, Greener By Default, the Plant Based Treaty is running a Related Campaign, No Milk Tax which has gotten hundreds of chains to drop their plant milk up charge, among others
Love the detailed answer with all the links, thanks!
With the laws of supply and demand, simply reducing our collective demand makes the industry smaller.
this simply isn’t true.
My focus is on trying to make the world a better place locally, on a tiny level. There is a lot wrong with the world and I can’t do anything about it on that overwhelmingly massive scale, but helping in whatever tiny way I can creates ripples that reach further than trying to fix EVERYTHING.
picking up litter in your local park, or just volunteering to trim the weeds in it, does make a big impact.
the problem is once you start doing that don’t hang around in the park looking for litterers who are trying to ‘ruin’ your good deeds.
i have notice in volunteer work there is a fine line between doing good, and then imposing your rules on everyone else and become massive asshole. this is why HOAs and such go so wrong. they usually start off with good-intentions but get warped into perverse controlling nonsense.
and if you volunteer and find out the people around you are weirdo assholes, just quit and do something else. i joined a community garden awhile back and left after 6 months because so many members were losers who were just shitting on everyone else’s plot for not being as nice as theirs or getting jealous that a plot 10 ft over ‘got more sun’. it was insane how petty and pathetic a lot of the long time gardeners were because they felt they were ‘owned’ the garden.
That is really a lovely thought and exactly what everyone should aim to do in my opinion. :) Thank you very much for trying to make a difference.
The most important problem is bettering oneself. Aligning your subconscious with your rational mind and making sure that you don’t do stupid human things like greed, pride, jealousy, wrath, etc.
Almost everyone thinks they are a “good person” and “don’t do these things” but almost everyone has certain situations that trigger them or behavioral patterns that automatically include them, i.e. almost no one is actually as good as they think they are.
Identifying these triggers and patterns in you and taking steps to mitigate/remove them is the largest impact you can have on the world.
It’s also one of the hardest things because admitting your wrongs to yourself is very painful. One’s ego is a powerful thing that is one of the worst pains a human can feel when bruised. That’s why it’s so much easier to look for “other people to blame”, it keeps your ego from hurting you.
But each and every person thinks like that and thus becomes “part of the problem”. Even if you’re a “better person than X other person”, that doesn’t mean you should just stop improving yourself and try to change X instead, because chances are, you’ll never change how X behaves. But it’s much more likely you’ll be able to change how you behave yourself and actually have an impact on the world.
If you try it for a while, or if you experienced it yourself, it’s very ineffective to try to change other people. The only thing that really works is helping people change themselves. But if the will is not already there, there’s basically nothing you can do. And thus, creating that will in yourself is the best thing you can do.
according to whose standards?
i like to read books and learn and try new things. i also of a lot of athletics, like half marathon type stuff.
a lot of people think i’m a massive asshole for doing these things, as me merely talking about my interests and lifestyle ‘triggers’ them, as in makes them feel insecure about themselves. also they were not making me popular, famous, or rich, so what is the point of any of it?
according to my exes i would have been a better person if i gave up all my hobbies, got a soulless corporate job to make as much money as possible, and then spent most of that money on them…
a lot of people’s desires/goals require other people being subordinate to them, including you. and if you don’t comply, they will think you’re a shitty person.
I don’t really understand where you’re coming from here or rather what exactly you talk about. You reading, learning and doing athletics is exactly what I meant in my comment, so I think it’s amazing you’re doing those things.
But also yes, I intentionally made this comment because it seems like as you experienced, a lot of people need to do more of it, including your exes.
And the “being subordinate” is also exactly what I meant, they see you being amazing and comparison leads to them feeling bad about themselves, which is obviously your fault /s.
Are you lonely?
People do things for social approval. That’s my point. Social approval requires meeting other people’s standards, not your own.
And when your standards are not in synch with the people around you, it’s miserable and leads to conflict.
Where I come from ‘bettering yourself’ got you socially shitcanned. And that’s true for a lot of parts of the world and family relationships.
The mantra of meritocractic achievement is only social and rewarding among the upper middle classes, in the USA at least. If you existing outside of that, you people often regard ‘self improvement’ with hostility.
I mostly agree with you except that I believe we can change other people. Maybe we can’t change a specific person, but I think (or at least I would love to believe) that we can influence people we interact with, in big and small ways.
