Is the world getting less safe?

PhysiologyRocks

So, is there more crime, or is it just better publicised?

Is HIV a bigger threat than the diseases that have almost been eradicated?

My guess would be that things are about the same, but then again, I haven't been around all that long.

Thoughts?

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

The grass is always greener on the other side.

PhysiologyRocks

Francisco Helpful Nitwit wrote: »

The grass is always greener on the other side.

And a stitch in time saves nine.

phasers

AH is so feckin depressing lately

galwayrush

Nope same ****, just happening to new / different people.:rolleyes:

PhysiologyRocks

phasers wrote: »

AH is so feckin depressing lately

Depressing...



Or earth-shattering?:D

Dannyboi3k

lol

Depressin'

deisedude

Don't think its gotten much worse the past ten years anyway. Media scaremongering more than anything. A headline of "We are all going to die" is going to sell more copies than a headline of "We are all grand!"

brummytom

Well we don't have the old highwaymen any more.. and no battles, so getting killed's probably less likely.

But we've enough Nuclear Weapons on this planet to destroy it 7 times over.. so that's nice

dyl10

Depends where you go.

I wouldn't fancy back backing around Paris during the French Revolution!

galwayrush

brummytom wrote: »

Well we don't have the old highwaymen any more.. and no battles, so getting killed's probably less likely.

But we've enough Nuclear Weapons on this planet to destroy it 7 times over.. so that's nice

Give me Highwaymen before Chavs any day.:rolleyes:

rossie1977

more safe than at any time in recent history imo, hiv and aids are not very important in the first world, the chance of getting the disease is still low, the chance of a male without a condom getting hiv from an already infected hiv female through vaginal intercourse are like 0.5%

there is no major war or disease anywhere, no world war 2, no spanish flu, no black death, no Shi Rebellion, no mogul conquests, no ming dynasty, no napoleon wars

dyl10

Sure the worlds biggest problem at the moment is the flu.
Can't be that bad

ejmaztec

phasers wrote: »

AH is so feckin depressing lately

Can't be more depressing than your location.:eek:

brummytom

ejmaztec wrote: »

Can't be more depressing than your location.:eek:

You've obviously never been to my location

El Weirdo

No. It's getting more dangerous.

Capt'n Midnight

Ireland is more dangerous than the 1950's but you wouldn't what to have been here then.

other wise fairly ok


There is no food shortage, just some poorer people can't afford to compete with biofuel. increased education means that the birth rate will fall so population will peak soon at maybe 50% higher than today so it might even be possible to have a sustainable world

phasers

ejmaztec wrote: »

Can't be more depressing than your location.:eek:

It's getting close

Havermeyer

I think the world is coming close to it's end.

May not be in our life time, but it's not far off.

In my opinion anyway. And if I'm wrong I won't be here to listen to anybody's "I told you so", so f*ck it.

Earthhorse

No.

Chris Anderson wrote:

Systemic Flaws In the Reported World View

Paradoxically, one of the biggest reasons for being optimistic is that there are systemic flaws in the reported world view. Certain types of news — for example dramatic disasters and terrorist actions — are massively over-reported, others — such as scientific progress and meaningful statistical surveys of the state of the world — massively under-reported.

Although this leads to major problems such as distortion of rational public policy and a perpetual gnawing fear of apocalypse, it is also reason to be optimistic. Once you realize you're being inadvertently brainwashed to believe things are worse than they are, you can... with a little courage... step out into the sunshine.

How does the deception take place?

The problem starts with a deep human psychological response. We're wired to react more strongly to dramatic stories than to abstract facts. There are obvious historical and Darwinian reasons why this should be so. The news that an invader has just set fire to a hut in your village demands immediate response. The genes for equanimity in such circumstances got burned up long ago.

Although our village is now global, we still instinctively react the same way. Spectacle, death and gore. We lap it up. Layer on top of that a media economy that's driven by competition for attention and the problem is magnified. Over the years media owners have proven to their complete satisfaction that the stories that attract large audiences are the simple human dramas. Rottweiler Savages Baby is a bigger story than Poverty Percentage Falls even though the latter is a story about better lives for millions.

Today our media can source news from 190 countries and 6 billion people. Therefore you can be certain that every single day there will be word of spectacularly horrifying things happening somewhere. And should you get bored of reading about bombs, fires and wars, why not see them breaking live on cable 24/7 with ever more intimate pictures and emotional responses.

Meta-level reporting doesn't get much of a look-in.

So for example, the publication last year of a carefully researched Human Security Report received little attention. Despite the fact that it had concluded that the numbers of armed conflicts in the world had fallen 40% in little over a decade. And that the number of fatalities per conflict had also fallen. Think about that. The entire news agenda for a decade, received as endless tales of wars, massacres and bombings, actually missed the key point. Things are getting better. If you believe Robert Wright and his NonZero hypothesis, this is part of a very long-term and admittedly volatile trend in which cooperation eventually trumps conflict. Percentage of males estimated to have died in violence in hunter gatherer societies? Approximately 30%. Percentage of males who died in violence in the 20th century complete with two world wars and a couple of nukes? Approximately 1%. Trends for violent deaths so far in the 21st century? Falling. Sharply.

In fact, most meta-level reporting of trends show a world that is getting better. We live longer, in cleaner environments, are healthier, and have access to goods and experiences that kings of old could never have dreamed of. If that doesn't make us happier, we really have no one to blame except ourselves. Oh, and the media lackeys who continue to feed us the litany of woes that we subconsciously crave.

Stephen Pinker wrote:

The Decline of Violence

In 16th century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted on a stage and was slowly lowered into a fire. According to the historian Norman Davies, "the spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized."

As horrific as present-day events are, such sadism would be unthinkable today in most of the world. This is just one example of the most important and under appreciated trend in the history of our species: the decline of violence. Cruelty as popular entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, genocide for convenience, torture and mutilation as routine forms of punishment, execution for trivial crimes and misdemeanors, assassination as a means of political succession, pogroms as an outlet for frustration, and homicide as the major means of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. Yet today they are statistically rare in the West, less common elsewhere than they used to be, and widely condemned when they do occur.

Most people, sickened by the headlines and the bloody history of the twentieth century, find this claim incredible. Yet as far as I know, every systematic attempt to document the prevalence of violence over centuries and millennia (and, for that matter, the past fifty years), particularly in the West, has shown that the overall trend is downward (though of course with many zigzags). The most thorough is James Payne’s The History of Force; other studies include Lawrence Keeley’s War Before Civilization, Martin Daly & Margo Wilson’s Homicide, Donald Horowitz’s The Deadly Ethnic Riot, Robert Wright’s Nonzero, Peter Singer’s The Expanding Circle, Stephen Leblanc’s Constant Battles, and surveys of the ethnographic and archeological record by Bruce Knauft and Philip Walker.

Anyone who doubts this by pointing to residues of force in America (capital punishment in Texas, Abu Ghraib, sex slavery in immigrant groups, and so on) misses two key points. One is that statistically, the prevalence of these practices is almost certainly a tiny fraction of what it was in centuries past. The other is that these practices are, to varying degrees, hidden, illegal, condemned, or at the very least (as in the case of capital punishment) intensely controversial. In the past, they were no big deal. Even the mass murders of the twentieth century in Europe, China, and the Soviet Union probably killed a smaller proportion of the population than a typical hunter-gatherer feud or biblical conquest. The world’s population has exploded, and wars and killings are scrutinized and documented, so we are more aware of violence, even when it may be statistically less extensive.

What went right? No one knows, possibly because we have been asking the wrong question—"Why is there war?" instead of “Why is there peace?" There have been some suggestions, all unproven. Perhaps the gradual perfecting of a democratic Leviathan—"a common power to keep [men] in awe"—has removed the incentive to do it to them before they do it to us. Payne suggests that it’s because for many people, life has become longer and less awful—when pain, tragedy, and early death are expected features of one’s own life, one feels fewer compunctions about inflicting them on others. Wright points to technologies that enhance networks of reciprocity and trade, which make other people more valuable alive than dead. Singer attributes it to the inexorable logic of the golden rule: the more one knows and thinks, the harder it is to privilege one’s own interests over those of other sentient beings. Perhaps this is amplified by cosmopolitanism, in which history, journalism, memoir, and realistic fiction make the inner lives of other people, and the contingent nature of one’s own station, more palpable—the feeling that "there but for fortune go I."

My optimism lies in the hope that the decline of force over the centuries is a real phenomenon, that is the product of systematic forces that will continue to operate, and that we can identify those forces and perhaps concentrate and bottle them.

Source: http://www.edge.org/q2007/q07_1.html

galwayrush

nummnutts wrote: »

I think the world is coming close to it's end.

May not be in our life time, but it's not far off.

In my opinion anyway. And if I'm wrong I won't be here to listen to anybody's "I told you so", so f*ck it.

Yep, every day is a day closer to the day that the sun will finally give up the ghost and it's depleting mass will no be enough to contain itself and it will expand to engulf us as it slowly dies, only a few million years left i'm afraid/:rolleyes:

raah!

If anything to world is too safe. Safety has taken priority over freedom and we're all too stupid to make decisions for ourselves.

galwayrush

raah! wrote: »

If anything to world is too safe. Safety has taken priority over freedom and we're all too stupid to make decisions for ourselves.

A lot of us aren't stupid, we're just not allowed to make the decisions.:(

galwayrush

galwayrush wrote: »

A lot of us aren't stupid, we're just not allowed to make the decisions.:(

There will always be contenders for the Darwin award, no matter what safety devices & laws are put in their way.

ScumLord

The world is much safer than it was 50/100/200 years ago, people have rights, women can vote, black people aren't slaves, diseases have cures. HIV?!! Try the bubonic plague. Buildings have lightning rods so they don't burst into flames when they get hit by lightning. When a less well off country gets hit by tsunamis the world rallies to their aid and thousands are saved out of pure compassion. We have electricity! Running water and no matter how poor our health care system is, at least we have one.

ScumLord

ScumLord wrote: »

The western world is much safer than it was 50/100/200 years ago, people have rights, women can vote, black people aren't slaves, diseases have cures. HIV?!! Try the bubonic plague. Buildings have lightning rods so they don't burst into flames when they get hit by lightning. When a less well off country gets hit by tsunamis the world rallies to their aid and thousands are saved out of pure compassion. We have electricity! Running water and no matter how poor our health care system is, at least we have one.

Fyp, About 10% of the worlds population are living in conditions that have remained largly unchanged for thousands of years, I'm referring to the rural poor in the third world.

All the technolotgical advances of the 20th century have completely passed them by, they still use anamals to pull ploughs, no electricity sanitation from the dark ages etc

ScumLord

Deleted User wrote: »

Fyp, About 10% of the worlds population are living in conditions that have remained largly unchanged for thousands of years, I'm referring to the rural poor in the third world.

All the technolotgical advances of the 20th century have completely passed them by, they still use anamals to pull ploughs, no electricity sanitation from the dark ages etc

That's very true but it's still an improvement on the way things used to be. Bar 1st world countries invading and dragging them kicking and screaming into the modern world that's not going to change quickly. If this was Roman times we could just roll in and kill all the males, wipe out their culture and make them act like we want them to but the worlds not like that anymore.

flanum

Yes.. yes it is!

wudangclan

PhysiologyRocks wrote: »

So, is there more crime, or is it just better publicised?

Is HIV a bigger threat than the diseases that have almost been eradicated?

My guess would be that things are about the same, but then again, I haven't been around all that long.

Thoughts?

the world is safer today than it's ever been in history.
there are less murders,there is less war,less crime in general (i don't know a great deal about hiv)
peoples life expectancies are greater than ever before.
only most peoples perceptions don't match reality.
an excellent book on misinterpretation of stats and how the media alters or manipulates our perceptions is "risk;the science and politics of fear"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Risk-Science-Politics-Dan-Gardner/dp/0753515539/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252849005&sr=1-1

don't worry,rocks. you're safe.

af_thefragile

Blame Rupert Murdoch...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1aZcsY-O8Q

biko

The Western world is actually more safe now than ever.
A few hundred years ago a violent death was commonplace, now you stand a greater risk getting killed by a heart attack from eating too much.

Capt'n Midnight

Deleted User wrote: »

Fyp, About 10% of the worlds population are living in conditions that have remained largly unchanged for thousands of years, I'm referring to the rural poor in the third world.

All the technolotgical advances of the 20th century have completely passed them by, they still use anamals to pull ploughs, no electricity sanitation from the dark ages etc

Most people have mobile phones these days 60% IIRC

Most people are vacciated against many proventable diseases and we are on the way to eradicating some of them.


The existing crop of dictators are wanna be's compared to the ones last century. Thankfully it's almost impossible for an individual to pretend to be doing humanitarian work in his private Congo.

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.slate.com/id/2224275/ Worth a read , a bit optimistic


But says that back in our hunter gatherer days up 25% of died violent deaths, down to 3% with all the wars of the twentith century. Last year wars accounted for 25,600 in contrast, almost 500,000 people are killed each year in violent crimes and well over 1 million die in automobile accidents.

Capt'n Midnight

This is from 2004 but you get the idea

Nothing like the wars Just after WWI
Armenia, Poland, Russian Revolution , China , South America . "Police" actions in the Middle East. There was even some unpleasentness here then too

http://www.economicexpert.com/2a/21st:century.htm

Five overall largest mass killings of the 21st century (so far)

* Congolese Civil War, approx. 1.8 million deaths (3.3 million since 1997)
* Darfur conflict, 70,000 deaths.
* U.S. Invasion in Iraq, most estimates claim 10,000 - 30,000 Iraqi and 1,200 coalition deaths. The Lancet recently estimated 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion.
* Civil War in Ivory Coast, 3,000 deaths.
* September 11, 2001 attacks, 2,749 - 2,752 deaths.

The regime of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is believed to have caused many deaths, but the exact number is unknown.

Furthermore, there are several wars and dictatorships continuing from the 20th century. Mostly the number of deaths they caused during the 21st century is unknown.

irish_bob

PhysiologyRocks wrote: »

So, is there more crime, or is it just better publicised?

Is HIV a bigger threat than the diseases that have almost been eradicated?

My guess would be that things are about the same, but then again, I haven't been around all that long.

Thoughts?

while the world is safer now thant it was thrity years ago in so far as thier is no arms race or cold war , thier is a global threat from the rise of political islam

AnonoBoy

I would say the world is getting more dangerouser rather than less safe. There's a distinct difference I think you'll all agree.

Gone West

The decline of violence?
I live in a country with 16,000 confirmed murders per year (real number is much higher if you take into account the armys false positives when they kill civillians).

But to answer the original question, no, the world is getting safer.
6-7 years ago it was over 30,000 murders per year.
So statistically its 50% safer now. :pac:

ScumLord

AnonoBoy wrote: »

I would say the world is getting more dangerouser rather than less safe. There's a distinct difference I think you'll all agree.

I don't agree the world is getting more dangerous. The world is more or less the same as it always was, climate wise we're living in a utopia compared to the past. Technology wise we have heath and safety procedures that have drastically reduced the harm associated with all technology including buildings and even the humble automobile is safer these days there's just more of them out there.

You have to realise that even though numbers of accidents are higher that's probably got more to do with the larger population than anything else.

Everything is safer these days, previous generations have died to ensure that.

Even dangerous animals are being pushed to the edge of extinction.

Red Hand

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Ireland is more dangerous than the 1950's but you wouldn't what to have been here then.

other wise fairly ok


There is no food shortage, just some poorer people can't afford to compete with biofuel. increased education means that the birth rate will fall so population will peak soon at maybe 50% higher than today so it might even be possible to have a sustainable world

Population collapse will happen at some time, quicker if war casulaties decrease and diseases are cured.

joseph brand

@ OP: seems like a stupid question/ thread idea.

Just think of Genghis Khan, Vikings, Romans, barbarians, etc etc. . . the list goes on.

People in Mexico have a terrible time these days, I won't go into it.

So NO!!!

:rolleyes: What a silly question.

Capt'n Midnight

ScumLord wrote: »

Even dangerous animals are being pushed to the edge of extinction.

Excluding animals that co-evolved with humans, most of the megafauna / top predators world wide were wiped outshortly after the first humans arrived at their habitats. These animals survived the previous ice ages so it probably wasn't just ice age related.


Many Giant birds
Giant Aussie lizards
Ground sloths
all herbivores bigger than elephants worldwide, bigger than kangeroos in Oz, all American camels, horses, the biggest cats

ScumLord

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Excluding animals that co-evolved with humans, most of the megafauna / top predators world wide were wiped outshortly after the first humans arrived at their habitats. These animals survived the previous ice ages so it probably wasn't just ice age related.


Many Giant birds
Giant Aussie lizards
Ground sloths
all herbivores bigger than elephants worldwide, bigger than kangeroos in Oz, all American camels, horses, the biggest cats

All you have to do is look at this country, it had wolfs and bears. We turned nature against itself. Example being the Irish wolf hound.

I suppose you could say it's safer for us and more dangerous for every other living thing on the planet.

Mr Benevolent

brummytom wrote: »

But we've enough Nuclear Weapons on this planet to destroy it 7 times over.. so that's nice

Nope. We've enough nuclear weapons to destroy human civilisation seven times over. The planet wouldn't even notice.

Helix

the world is safer than its ever been