Instructions for Replies
Read peer discussion posts and respond. Be sure to respond to your peers thoughtfully, add value to the discussion, and draw upon your insights to further the discussion. Focus on the similarities and differences between your experience with the optimism project thus far, and the experiences of your classmates.
Add references.
1-Kathleen Carton
I believe that TED Talk came at a good time for me. I’ve just been very overall pessimistic so it’s good to see actual statistics/graphs that show that we as a whole have improved in my lifetime. The graph that really shocked me was the amount of less time we do on household chores prior to new inventions such as the vacuum or microwave. It’s crazy to think that people spent a whole work week every week just cleaning. You also have to consider that it was probably a two plus person household and one partner was responsible for the cleaning and cooking while I’m a single person doing both. But even so I no where near spend that amount of time cleaning each week.
Besides cleaning it was good to see how the entire world was improving from poverty to literacy to child mortalities. I found an article talking about how the world really is improving. It mentioned about how decades ago experts were predicting about 5 million people would die of AIDS in 2020, but due to new health polices and help with distributing millions of antiretroviral drugs throughout Africa there were roughly 500,000 deaths in 2020. Per article, “that means nine in 10 projected deaths were prevented” (Thompson, 2022). It’s crazy to think how life would be if we didn’t have that progression.
Reference:
Thompson, D. (2022, September 13). The world really is getting better. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/bill-melinda-gates-foundation-goalkeepers-report-poverty/671415/
2-Monesha Montgomery
Hello,
I enjoyed watching the video of Dr. Pinker findings. The information that he gave did show views on optimism and pessimism that is currently going on in the world. Dr. Pinker talk views more on the world having an increase in improvement. The thoughts gathered from 30 years ago that I found from the video that was interesting, 200 years ago 90% of the world was in proverty, fewer than 10 percentage on people was in poverty until 2015. War of all kinds have become less and fewer deadly, the annual rate of war has fallen to 22 per hundred thousand per year in the early fifties to 1.2 today. Also the world is more democratic than it has been in the past decade.( Steven Pinker, 2018) This information does correlate with the data I have collected for the optimism project.
Upon reading an article from Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie. One of the most important points that emerges from the historical data that we cover is that the world is much better than it was in the past. Child mortality is a fraction of what it was; fewer people die from disease, conflict and famine; we live longer and healthier lives; and most children get the opportunity to go to school and receive an education. Max Roser views with Hannah Ritchie along with Dr. Pinkers, improvent has increased from what it has been which is a good sign that the world is getter better in some areas.
Reference
TED. (2018, May 21). Youtube. Retrieved from the world getting better or
worse?A look at the numbers (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ
Optimism and Pessimism.(2023,May 26)Our World in data.https://our world in
data.org/optimism -and -pessimism? ref=https%3A%2F%2Fgithubhel
