# 2015: the best year for humanity yet **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 31, 2015, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847 "2015-12-31T20:39:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/1 "2015-12-31T20:39:01Z")
So [sayeth Daniel Hannan](http://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2015/12/daniel-hannan-2.html). A sample: > [@Daniel Hannan](#): > > The world is more peaceful > > What? What? How can I possibly say this when Assad and ISIS have turned Syria into a living hell? And what about Afghanistan and Yemen and Libya? What about Paris and Tunis? What about Charleston? Well, it’s human nature to pay more attention to recent than to old news. The abominations in the Levant fill our TV screens; but no newsreader ever says “There is no war in Uganda at the moment, nor in Bosnia, nor in Vietnam”. > > True, the Syrian conflict has prompted a slight uptick in the otherwise declining graph of terrorist deaths. But, even with Syria and Iraq, there were fewer terrorist deaths in 2015 than in 2010, before Arab unrest began. If we count violent deaths overall, rather than just those caused by terrorism, the fall is even more marked. One of the reasons that shootings in the U.S. are so newsworthy is that, paradoxically, they are becoming rarer. The number of homicides in that country is down by 600,000 since 1995, and is falling at 3,000 a year. Globally, according to the U.N, the number of people dying violently has fallen by six per cent since the beginning of the century. He also says the world is better fed, greener, healthier, and richer. Do you agree? ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/2 "2015-12-31T23:45:39Z")
He is broadly correct-on the whole the trajectory of history has been towards improvement of conditions notwithstanding world wars, terrorism, mass shootings, and natural disasters. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2016, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/3 "2016-01-01T02:24:26Z")
Yes. Globally speaking, this was a good year. There are still tons of problems that need to be fixed…but we have, in fact, fixed a lot of other problems. Fewer nations are outright tyrannies than ten years ago. That’s a real good start. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2016, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/4 "2016-01-01T03:13:54Z")
If you have 18 minutes to spare, have a look at [this video](http://omeleto.com/219202/): “This Animated Data Visualization of World War 2 Fatalities Is Shocking.” It goes beyond WWII and it’s really astounding how far we’ve come as a species. ---
**Author:** ![Hank\_Beecher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hank_beecher/32/7275_2.png) [@Hank\_Beecher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hank_Beecher)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2016, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/5 "2016-01-01T03:29:26Z")
Here is another fascinating and relevant data visualization video: [Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four - YouTube](https://youtu.be/jbkSRLYSojo) ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2016, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/6 "2016-01-01T04:22:17Z")
You may also be interested in Max Roser’s [www.OurWorldInData.org](http://www.OurWorldInData.org) for more data visualizations along this theme. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2016, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/7 "2016-01-01T19:01:56Z")
Perhaps I’m a little overly-sensitive but I’m a bit annoyed that Hannan seems to attribute much of the negativity to clergy but overall I agree whole-heartedly. Here’s a few more articles: [World Bank says extreme poverty is below 10% for the first time.](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/05/world-bank-extreme-poverty-to-fall-below-10-of-world-population-for-first-time) [Things are good despite negative news.](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/opinion/nicholas-kristof-the-most-important-thing-and-its-almost-a-secret.html) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2016, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/8 "2016-01-01T19:37:50Z")
What does this sentence by Daniel Hannan mean?: \> The number of homicides in that country is down by 600,000 since 1995, and is \> falling at 3,000 a year. It’s true that the murder rate in the U.S. peaked (over the last few decades) in about 1992 or 1993. So, yes, the murder rate has gone down since 1995. But what does it mean that it’s gone down by 600,000? The number of murders in the U.S. is now about 15,000 (give or take a few thousand) per year. How could it have gone down by 600,000? What could that possibly mean? ---
**Author:** ![Mnemnosyne](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mnemnosyne/32/3347_2.png) [@Mnemnosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mnemnosyne)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2016, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/9 "2016-01-01T23:12:14Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > What does this sentence by Daniel Hannan mean?: > > \> The number of homicides in that country is down by 600,000 since 1995, and is > \> falling at 3,000 a year. > > It’s true that the murder rate in the U.S. peaked (over the last few decades) in about 1992 or 1993. So, yes, the murder rate has gone down since 1995. But what does it mean that it’s gone down by 600,000? The number of murders in the U.S. is now about 15,000 (give or take a few thousand) per year. How could it have gone down by 600,000? What could that possibly mean? Probably counting the number of murders that ‘didn’t happen’ because the murder rate fell by 3,000 a year? If you calculate that each year 3000 less people were murdered than the previous year, that comes out to 630,000 people that would have been murdered if the yearly murders had remained at the 1995 numbers. Basically (3000_20)+(3000_19)+(3000\*18)…and so on. Alternately, it could be counting 3000\*20 and accidentally adding an extra 0, since that’s 60,000. Either way it’s kind of a nonsensical number. Especially since it suggests that there were 75,000 murders in 1995, if the current year has 15,000 and the number has fallen by 3,000 per year since then. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2016, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/10 "2016-01-01T23:42:18Z")
I can’t find any website with a list of the number of murders (not murder rates per capita, but number of murders) for the period from 1995 to the present. My guess is that the number was a little less than 30,000 in 1995 and a little less than 15,000 is 2015. If the number has dropped each year over that time by the same amount, that would say that the total is about 470,000 over those 21 years. If the number had stayed at 30,000 each year, that would be about 630,000 total for those 21 years. So perhaps the total number of murders for those 21 years is maybe 160,000 less than it would have been if the number stayed at the 1995 level. So the number 600,000 comes out of nowhere. The number 3,000 comes out of nowhere. The sentence “The number of homicides in that country is down by 600,000 since 1995, and is falling at 3,000 a year” makes no sense. I presume the numbers were completely messed up in editing. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2016, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/11 "2016-01-02T12:40:49Z")
I haven’t reviewed his data in detail, but as always with such statistics, there’s a danger of focusing on the mean, which may improve, while in fact, a greater number of people are actually worse of (hence the need of looking at the [variances](http://www.sdmb-comics.com/?id=2560)). But I truthfully don’t know if that’s the case or just my biased view. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Wilson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@Earl\_Wilson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Wilson)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2016, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/12 "2016-01-02T13:05:34Z")
very much so its a different generation these days, i remember when i graduated high school in 2001. my freshman year we had well over 1000 students but by the time i graduated only 256 people did so. in reference to that my cousin who just graduated had over 80% of his class that was with him his freshman year to graduate with him. that speaks volumes as to the new younger generation now taking there place in the world. there smarter then us “yikes”. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2016, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2015-the-best-year-for-humanity-yet/741847/13 "2016-01-03T06:53:14Z")
> [@Earl\_Wilson](#): > > very much so its a different generation these days, i remember when i graduated high school in 2001. my freshman year we had well over 1000 students but by the time i graduated only 256 people did so. in reference to that my cousin who just graduated had over 80% of his class that was with him his freshman year to graduate with him. that speaks volumes as to the new younger generation now taking there place in the world. there smarter then us “yikes”. Ironic.