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That's not even remotely true. The vast majority of humans had very very stable futures. Like tens of thousands of years stable. Civilization as we know it i

That's not even remotely true. The vast majority of humans had very very stable futures. Like tens of thousands of years stable. Civilization as we know it is very very recent and unstable.

keiferski 6y ago
The Cold War seems to have evaporated entirely from the collective imagination. For nearly half a century, people had a not unreasonable expectation that a nuke might end the world at any moment. Prior to that, you had WW2, the Depression, WW1, slums and brutal industrial factory jobs and before that mostly subsistence farming. The idea that life today is so precarious and difficult is absurd. We just aren’t used to difficulty.
- carapace 6y ago
  The Cold War is still going on. We are still at risk of nuclear destruction. Not only are the old weapons still around but we are making new ones for some crazy reason. (Check the Doomsday Clock, I'm not the only person who has noticed that atomic war is still threatening this planet.) You have to take the long view: For approximately a million years we lived in very stable societies (as judged by the artifacts and art left behind.) In fact the people of Sentinel Island and some other places still live this way. Very recently, since roughly 10k to 15k ago, we started doing agriculture and cities. Since then things have been rough: wars, famines, societies collapsing, etc. Despite that, in the last 400-500 years, we have developed science and technology, which has increased and accelerated civilization but not stabilized it. Now of course some people have had it pretty good for, say, the last century or so (I date it from the ready availability of hot and cold running water in the tub. If you can take a hot bath you're ahead of the game, IMO.) And that's great! And more and more people are getting in on that, which is also great! But if you want to say, as you did, that "Pretty much every single generation other than your parents (assuming you’re 25-40) had a tougher time and lived in a world with a more uncertain future. Every generation, going back millions of years." that's wrong. It's only going back a few thousands of years, at most, and then only for a small fraction of the people on Earth. That's before the problem that luxury the few are enjoying is bought at the cost of the life or our whole planet! Is it really so great after all if some people get to live well for a generation or two but then everybody (that survives) has to live in post-apocalyptic hell? Sentinel Island will be destroyed by the rising ocean in a few decades or so. The folks that have lived there for some 40,000 years will die or be forced to migrate. That's on us, not them.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    You are dramatically underestimating the difficulty of hunter gatherer life.
    - thesagan 6y ago
      Don't many hunter gatherers have easier lives? See: "According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well." Citation: "Notes on the Original Affluent Society", Man the Hunter. R.B. Lee and I. DeVore (New York: Aldine Publishing Company) pp. 85–89. Published in 1966.
      - hntrader 6y ago
        Definitely not. The average life expectancy in Africa today, the poorest continent, is over 60. The average life expectancy of hunter gatherers was about 30, give or take 5 years.
        disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        Average life expectancies are very very deceptive. If lots of babies die (which was the norm for much of history), then it's gonna skew the mean massively downwards in a way that doesn't reflect the observed distribution, conditional on not dying as a baby. For instance, my understanding is that life expectancy at age 5 in both Africa and the UK are approximately equal.
        hntrader 6y ago
        "approximately equal" Right, because of basic modern medical care, which hunter gatherers don't have, often dying of problems with their teeth in their 20s, untreated infections, etc. And that's only one of a deluge of reasons as to why hunter gatherer life was much more difficult than modern life, even modern life in relatively poor countries. We can have a debate about whether life is easier in current South Sudan versus prehistory hunter gatherer tribes. Beyond that there's no debate to be had.
- conductr 6y ago
  > We just aren’t used to difficulty This is it absolutely. We can’t even fully understand how easy our lives are. I’m an adult with mouths to feed, yet both my wife and I barely know how to cook. And that’s only our biggest problem assuming we have access to food. We certainly have no clue how to procure food outside of retail. This is part of what worries me for my kids. It’s been so easy, the equilibrium is more difficult. As we know from covid, weather events, etc our whole way of life is a fragile house of cards.
burntoutfire 6y ago
A good fraction of the pre-civilization humans were killed by a blow to the head...
- hntrader 6y ago
  In historical Europe, the probability of dying due to skull fracture varied between 2 percent (some places in England), 7 percent (London) and 20 percent (Croatia). Not to mention early death from famine and disease and other forms of homicide. The notion that we've got it harder now is wrong on all counts. There's a case to be made that we've got new existential risks due to technological progress (climate change, nukes, AI), and that's accurate, but tech/civilization will also help us to offset other existential risks (asteroid impact, pathogen). So that's up for debate.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    It's not harder. It's unfair and this unfairness tends to be cyclical. People take up the pitchforks and get rid of their leaders.
cat199 6y ago
> That's not even remotely true. I beg to differ - when's the last time you heard of a famine or major war in the 1st world? (same cannot be said of elsewhere, it is true)
- carapace 6y ago
  > when's the last time you heard of a famine or major war in the 1st world? Does what we're doing (I'm Team USA) in the Middle East count? In re: expectations of a stable future and the pros and cons of modern civilization, in the USA more people have died in car accidents than in all the wars we've fought.
jankyxenon 6y ago
Stable may be correct. But part of that stability was high infant / child death rates and very low life expectancy.

That's not even remotely true. The vast majority of humans had very very stable futures. Like tens of thousands of years stable. Civilization as we know it is very very recent and unstable.

keiferski 6y ago

The Cold War seems to have evaporated entirely from the collective imagination. For nearly half a century, people had a not unreasonable expectation that a nuke might end the world at any moment. Prior to that, you had WW2, the Depression, WW1, slums and brutal industrial factory jobs and before that mostly subsistence farming. The idea that life today is so precarious and difficult is absurd. We just aren’t used to difficulty.

carapace 6y ago
The Cold War is still going on. We are still at risk of nuclear destruction. Not only are the old weapons still around but we are making new ones for some crazy reason. (Check the Doomsday Clock, I'm not the only person who has noticed that atomic war is still threatening this planet.) You have to take the long view: For approximately a million years we lived in very stable societies (as judged by the artifacts and art left behind.) In fact the people of Sentinel Island and some other places still live this way. Very recently, since roughly 10k to 15k ago, we started doing agriculture and cities. Since then things have been rough: wars, famines, societies collapsing, etc. Despite that, in the last 400-500 years, we have developed science and technology, which has increased and accelerated civilization but not stabilized it. Now of course some people have had it pretty good for, say, the last century or so (I date it from the ready availability of hot and cold running water in the tub. If you can take a hot bath you're ahead of the game, IMO.) And that's great! And more and more people are getting in on that, which is also great! But if you want to say, as you did, that "Pretty much every single generation other than your parents (assuming you’re 25-40) had a tougher time and lived in a world with a more uncertain future. Every generation, going back millions of years." that's wrong. It's only going back a few thousands of years, at most, and then only for a small fraction of the people on Earth. That's before the problem that luxury the few are enjoying is bought at the cost of the life or our whole planet! Is it really so great after all if some people get to live well for a generation or two but then everybody (that survives) has to live in post-apocalyptic hell? Sentinel Island will be destroyed by the rising ocean in a few decades or so. The folks that have lived there for some 40,000 years will die or be forced to migrate. That's on us, not them.
- keiferski 6y ago
  You are dramatically underestimating the difficulty of hunter gatherer life.
  - thesagan 6y ago
    Don't many hunter gatherers have easier lives? See: "According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well." Citation: "Notes on the Original Affluent Society", Man the Hunter. R.B. Lee and I. DeVore (New York: Aldine Publishing Company) pp. 85–89. Published in 1966.
    - hntrader 6y ago
      Definitely not. The average life expectancy in Africa today, the poorest continent, is over 60. The average life expectancy of hunter gatherers was about 30, give or take 5 years.
      - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        Average life expectancies are very very deceptive. If lots of babies die (which was the norm for much of history), then it's gonna skew the mean massively downwards in a way that doesn't reflect the observed distribution, conditional on not dying as a baby. For instance, my understanding is that life expectancy at age 5 in both Africa and the UK are approximately equal.
        hntrader 6y ago
        "approximately equal" Right, because of basic modern medical care, which hunter gatherers don't have, often dying of problems with their teeth in their 20s, untreated infections, etc. And that's only one of a deluge of reasons as to why hunter gatherer life was much more difficult than modern life, even modern life in relatively poor countries. We can have a debate about whether life is easier in current South Sudan versus prehistory hunter gatherer tribes. Beyond that there's no debate to be had.
conductr 6y ago
> We just aren’t used to difficulty This is it absolutely. We can’t even fully understand how easy our lives are. I’m an adult with mouths to feed, yet both my wife and I barely know how to cook. And that’s only our biggest problem assuming we have access to food. We certainly have no clue how to procure food outside of retail. This is part of what worries me for my kids. It’s been so easy, the equilibrium is more difficult. As we know from covid, weather events, etc our whole way of life is a fragile house of cards.

burntoutfire 6y ago

A good fraction of the pre-civilization humans were killed by a blow to the head...

hntrader 6y ago
In historical Europe, the probability of dying due to skull fracture varied between 2 percent (some places in England), 7 percent (London) and 20 percent (Croatia). Not to mention early death from famine and disease and other forms of homicide. The notion that we've got it harder now is wrong on all counts. There's a case to be made that we've got new existential risks due to technological progress (climate change, nukes, AI), and that's accurate, but tech/civilization will also help us to offset other existential risks (asteroid impact, pathogen). So that's up for debate.
- imtringued 6y ago
  It's not harder. It's unfair and this unfairness tends to be cyclical. People take up the pitchforks and get rid of their leaders.

cat199 6y ago

> That's not even remotely true. I beg to differ - when's the last time you heard of a famine or major war in the 1st world? (same cannot be said of elsewhere, it is true)

carapace 6y ago
> when's the last time you heard of a famine or major war in the 1st world? Does what we're doing (I'm Team USA) in the Middle East count? In re: expectations of a stable future and the pros and cons of modern civilization, in the USA more people have died in car accidents than in all the wars we've fought.

jankyxenon 6y ago

Stable may be correct. But part of that stability was high infant / child death rates and very low life expectancy.