One thought experiment occurs to me: would you rather be born to a random pair of parents in the world now, or a random pair of parents 15,000 years ago? This s

One thought experiment occurs to me: would you rather be born to a random pair of parents in the world now, or a random pair of parents 15,000 years ago? This seems like a very personal way to phrase the central question: do you believe that humans were happier then or now? Granted, I suspect most people reading this would have the same gut reaction as me: to choose being born to random parents now. But how much of that is influenced by our experiences with and dependence on modern society? Most readers of this comment are probably well above the current global average of quality of life according to any plausible definition. Perhaps people currently living in poverty would have different gut reactions to the proposal. It’s outside the scope of this article, but the question could be extended into the future, where we have even less data (none). Would you rather be born to random parents now, or random parents some period in the future?