Addicted To Doom

 Yglesias talks about the accomplishments of the Secret Congress. Basically, Congress has done some great stuff, but it flies under the radar for two reasons. First, the more publicity it gets, the harder it is to make a deal. Partisanship means no one will sign off on any deals that are public. So, Congress writes a really good bill for clean water - in Yglesias' example - and the water gets cleaner. But if you make a big deal about it, Republicans won't do the next deal.

The bigger reason he notes - and this is true and more important - is that we are driven by negativity. We consume news stories that are negative. No one wants positive news, I guess. It's partly a function of the 24 hour news cycle and being terminally online. People click through negative headlines, even if the stories are neutral, so outlets write negative headlines. 

I just spoke to an old family friend who felt the world was falling apart. It really isn't, but it feels that way. We are so addicted to bad news that we can't even see the good news. Anyone notice the price of gasoline these days? As Yglesias notes, the story of "Gas Prices Return To Normal Levels" is not a story any major outlet will run, unless they can spin it around to a negative: "Cheaper Gas Prices Imperil Climate."

With Twitter falling apart, I've been wasting time on Tik Tok instead, and I found a feed of heartwarming stories. Just tweets and posts about really, really nice things. It was great! And yet when Jim Krasinski did his "Good News" YouTube thing, people shit all over it.

We are incapable of accepting the fact that in most ways, the world is much better off than it was 50 or even 20 years ago...which actually kinda makes us worse off. The air and water are cleaner, we've stamped out public smoking, we don't stand on the Cold War nuclear precipice, miracle drugs and technological advances proceed apace.

And yet the internet and mobile devices are robbing us of our happiness. If we combine the pervasive emotional impact of being online with the frankly terrifying advances in AI, it's time we stopped letting technology grow without some sort of master plan. We need to control the machines, because they are, to a large extent, controlling us. 

Ultimately, all I want for my sons is for them to be happy. Certain things - a modicum of wealth and comfort, health, love - are required for this, but I fear we will squander our happiness in pursuit of dopamine hits from Instagram and Tik Tok.