Much respect for your clear and thoughtful response on a very emotional issue for many. I think we just have a different take on the underlying facts. > QoL w

Much respect for your clear and thoughtful response on a very emotional issue for many. I think we just have a different take on the underlying facts. > QoL was the same in 1800 for most people as in 2000BC An interesting claim. Googling the history of meaningful corollaries to QoL raised some concerns for me though. Infant mortality was over 40% in 1800. The average work week in the Us was over 70 hours. https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ The deaths from flu and tuberculosis have been massively reduced, those diseases are still awful, but their impact is unrecognizable. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/258872/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article... They are still really deadly diseases for vulnerable populations, but I can't even imagine what it was like when they ravaged populations. You reduce child mortality (and improve other measures) by freeing up minds from menial labor through economies of scale. Those free minds invent processes that ease human endeavors and lower humanity's impact on the environment in drastic ways. These aren't small gains. The history of artificial light is an example, showing improvements in efficiency in magnitudes of tens of thousands. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-534-the-history-of-light https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/04/25/306862378/epis... For example, those free minds discover things like kerosene, which nearly resolves humanity's obsessive quest to murder every whale for oil. https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/light https://ourworldindata.org/light We still have a lot of work to do to protect whales, but there's a reason Moby Dick resonated when it was written, everyone knew about the significance of that then major industry. I'm not a transhumanist, but I am awestruck by the pace of human progress. Solar adoption looks glacial while we're waiting for price parity, but is there any doubt it will displace fossils over the next few decades? Human inventiveness seems the best way to lower impacts while also obtaining other human goals. For all that I want the highest MIPS per gram ratio in the solar system as possible.