5 ms·
One only needs to look at history to see our capacity for rapid improvement in retrospect. One of my favorite metrics is life expectancy. In 1800, most people w
by wheels 15y ago
One only needs to look at history to see our capacity for rapid improvement in retrospect. One of my favorite metrics is life expectancy. In 1800, most people wouldn’t expect to live past 30.
It's hard to take someone seriously writing about science who makes such a dumb mistake. The life expectancy for a 20 year old in 1800 was 64. I don't see how it can even pass the smell test for an intelligent person to assume that a couple hundred years ago people systematically keeled over at 30.
- gwern 15y agoYes, as cited it's dumb, and a good example of why averages can be so misleading (if he had been looking at median life expectancy charts, would he have made the same claim?) But on the other hand, the improvement is very real - it's not fake data. Where did this massive improvement come from? Orders of magnitude improvements in infant/child mortality!
- burgerbrain 15y agoYou are deliberately disregarding the improvements in modern medicine that caused such a dramatic drop in child/infant death. This seems like a pretty classic example of people not realizing how wildly spectacular modern society is, because they're living in it.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]