The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.

This video is an adaptation of Max Roser's article, "The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better." It's a simple yet important point that society at large underappreciates. Yet, it's a crucial aspect of humanity's trajectory and quite relevant to how we think about the future.

The cup is half empty The cup is half full The cup could have more water

I shall name the dark feline "Skepticat."

Every man across every era, race, religion, and culture has two opposing mentalities: 1. We're so over. 2. We're so back.

It's incredibly satisfying for R.A. to point their cute little paw at a conclusion or data.

It's also important to remember the fourth, though arguably less important one: the world can be worse. The world is so much better than it has been, and it has potential to be even better. But to achieve that we need to maintain its health (e.g. climate change, democracy, AI safety).

I resonate with this a lot. As an immigrant to the US from a poor developing country its very clear how the world can be amazing and awful at the same time. And it's not unanimous that developed > underdeveloped under these lenses. It's often in these harder situations that you see change and you see people that truly believe in change as they see it everyday. Thanks

...And the world could be worse. This is also an important realization, because many of the things making the world better required active efforts to maintain.

I pleasantly surprised myself when I jerked into tears at hearing that 99.55% of children in the EU make it. Like, holy crap that's stunningly beautiful - what else are we capable of as a species?

If only so many people weren't fundamentally against change for some reason that they cant explain but cling onto desperately

I want a time-machine, so I can go back 7 years to ask Rob Miles if he thinks that this statement is highly probable: "Robert, your path ahead with the greatest positive impact... is to be a voice-actor for a cat."

Thesis: The world is awful Antithesis: The world is much better Synthesis: The world can be much better

I don't want to survive. I want to live

I do have a problem with charities in that they are usually a temporary fix. So for instance if conditions change and the charity has to leave an area (due to war, corruption, etc), then their effect is eliminated. For true change, government policy (at a minimum) needs to embrace, commit, and fund the charity's solution itself.

This reminds me a lot of Hans Rosling and his philosophy, which goes something like: You should be able to hold two thoughts about the world at once; things are getting better, and they're not good enough. Or the short version; the world is bad, but better. I would highly recommend his book Factfulness, about our human biases that make it easy for us to tend towards a negative worldview, despite how well we're doing on so many fronts. And thanks for another great video, keep up the amazing work!

Great perspective, and central to the issue of the viability of continuous improvement. In a novel I'm reading, a professor and mentor responds to the defeatist, "glass half empty" attitude of his student by pouring a half-empty glass of beer on him. He asks whether it was the empty half or the full half that made the strongest impression. The student goes on to head a historic project expected to be a great achievement for humanity.

How do you cope with the pain of knowing how hard so many people and places are being abused? Change comes so slow and with such terrible pushback

This is what i've been thinking for years now! So good to have it put into words, thank you so much for this amazing video! I see a lot of people around me fall into that trap of pessimism, that "The world is so cruel and unjust, and it will only get worse and worse and worse...", and although it may be half true, looking at the whole picture, history is a story of development, it is a course that goes steadily up and up, and goes faster every year. The world IS getting better, and it has never stopped getting better. Yes, we have a few blips of devolution here and there, but the trend is clear enough. The world we live in is the best that has ever existed up until now, and the worst that will exist from here on out. Never forget this. And never stop fighting for that change, because it is possible, and it is coming, and it is coming because of you. This way of thinking from my personal experience comes about from a grasp of history more than anything. I only started developing these ideas once i got into military history, for example. More specifically, the human aspect of military history. Seeing what men felt and how life was and how terrible it must have been really opened my eyes to this. Reading about horrible things does not necessarily lead one to pessimism, it leads them to knowledge. And knowledge can be applied in the most various of ways. In the same vein, history is not just something you learn in school to get good grades, it is a useful thing! One that you take to the rest of life, even if you won't actively use it in a "practical" environment. It builds and develops the mind, it provides you with the tools to create new ideas, to think rationally. Like all other disciplines, i might add!

Only the Avatar can master all four elements: The world is awful, the world is better, the world can be better, the world can be worst.

Lately I see a frustrating trend. Any time someone criticize current situation of something being bad (especially if it's related to global warming), the almost automatic response is about all the better things we have today and that "just X amount of years ago people were poor, hungry and at the mercy of all diseases", which therefore the argument is invalid. Or your average "Oh, you hate society, yet you live in one" kind of response. Yes, of course. Some stuff got much better than the past. But some at the same time are going much worse. One shouldn't only focus on the negatives, obviously. But we shouldn't be blindly optimistic either. We shouldn't focus onto a problem only when we are directly affected by it. I understand most people, me included, don't have the time, the patience and the resources to supposedly solve world problems, but at least spread awareness might reach the eyes and ears of someone who can, even if partially.