Why You Don’t Realize What You’ve Lost

You can’t fix a problem if you’ve forgotten it’s broken.

I recently learned about a concept called “Shifting Baseline Syndrome,” and it completely changed how I view progress.

It explains the mechanics of how we get used to things getting worse without even realizing it. Essentially, every new generation accepts the world they were born into as “normal,” effectively erasing the memory of how good things used to be. We don’t compare today to history, we only compare it to yesterday.

This creates a dangerous blind spot in how we work and live. Whether it is our shortening attention spans or the loss of privacy, we are constantly lowering our standards because we forgot the old baseline.

simplifying further : to understand what is actually happening, you have to stop looking at the current trend and look back at the original data.

You can’t fix a problem if you’ve forgotten it’s broken.