5 ms·

feel free to go back live 2500 years ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bmitc 4y ago
What is that an argument for? The amount of technology developed by humans is highly skewed to the past couple hundred years. In that couple of hundred years, more people are starving today, right now, than there were people alive just a couple hundred years ago. One has to ask, why is that? I would argue that our technological explosion and industrialization are key components to this. For example, there's the idea that technological development feeds inequality.
- Retric 4y ago
  > more people are starving today, right now, than there where people alive just a couple hundred years ago. This is false, more people are in extreme poverty today but that isn’t starvation as witnessed by these people going not dying off quickly. 99% of people living a couple hundred years ago where living in what we would consider extreme poverty so that’s basically complaining we have more people today. People without access to modern medicine, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, and education used to more or less just be people.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    It is not false. There’s data to back it up. I did use the word starving, which has a gradient of meanings (see below for separate numbers for the gradients), and I did not mean dying of starvation. The latest numbers are (definitions of state in the links): * 828 million people are hungry * 345 million are experiencing acute hunger * 924 million experience severe food insecurity * 2.3 billion people experience moderate or severe food insecurity * at least 9 million people die of starvation every year https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/un-report-global-hunger-SOFI-2022-FAO/en https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/un-report-global-hunger-... https://www.concernusa.org/story/world-hunger-facts/ https://www.concernusa.org/story/world-hunger-facts/ https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-hunger-numbers-rose-to-as-many-as-828-million-in-2021 https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-h... https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/losing-25000-hunger-every-day https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/losing-25000-hunger-... World populations: * 1850: 1.2 billion * 1800: 959 million * 1750: 629 million https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=world+population+1750 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=world+population+1750 Wealth concentration has dramatically increased since the 1970s and 1800s.
    - Retric 4y ago
      You misunderstood the statistics. “As many as 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021” This is not equivalent to saying 828 million people are experiencing hunter at the same time. Your conflating the two is exactly the way these statistics get severely distorted. “Figures on actual starvation are difficult to come by, but according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the less severe condition of undernourishment currently affects about 842 million people, or about one in eight (12.5%) people in the world population.[6] “ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation Inequality isn’t the same as starvation, in the last 40 years inequality grew while starvation dramatically declined. “In 40 years, the proportion of malnourished people in the developing world has been more than halved. The proportion of starving people has decreased even faster.”
      - bmitc 4y ago
        I didn't misunderstand anything. It's defined: > Hunger: an uncomfortable or painful sensation caused by insufficient energy from diet. In this report, the term hunger is synonymous with chronic undernourishment and is measured by the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU). > Inequality isn’t the same as starvation Of course it isn't. They're correlated, but I only mentioned that in support of my comment a level above. > in the last 40 years inequality grew while starvation dramatically declined. “In 40 years, the proportion of malnourished people in the developing world has been more than halved. The proportion of starving people has decreased even faster.” Where is this coming from? I'm not sure what your point is. The numbers are what they, and the things are defined. There's not misinterpretation. If you get a different sentiment than "industrialization has increased suffering", then that's fine, but it isn't clear where that comes from.
        Retric 4y ago
        > Where is this from It’s from the same Wikipedia article, which makes it clear starvation is a much smaller number of people than existed in the word in 1750 or even 1000. Again chronic undernourishment isn’t starvation. There a bunch of statistics saying ~850 million people regularly don’t get sufficient quantities of nutrition and calories for ideal heath is vastly different than starvation. My father was undernourished growing up in the US. He gained weight after joining the Army and was shorter than he probably should have been, but that describes the vast majority of humanity through most of human history. Even today people in the US regularly skip meals and go hungry which is a real problem that’s being addressed by real programs that are critically important. However, it’s extremely rare for people to actually starve here and we need to remember starvation is a much worse situation. So my point is this: The human body can adapt to less than ideal number of calories it’s a fairly wide range. Starvation is below the threshold of survival there is no way to adapt to it and it can quickly result in death. Misrepresenting what’s going on as starvation has real world consequences because preventing starvation related deaths is far more achievable than improving the diets of 850 million people. The actual number of starving people is relatively small which makes it an addressable problem.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

What is that an argument for? The amount of technology developed by humans is highly skewed to the past couple hundred years. In that couple of hundred years, more people are starving today, right now, than there were people alive just a couple hundred years ago. One has to ask, why is that? I would argue that our technological explosion and industrialization are key components to this. For example, there's the idea that technological development feeds inequality.

Retric 4y ago
> more people are starving today, right now, than there where people alive just a couple hundred years ago. This is false, more people are in extreme poverty today but that isn’t starvation as witnessed by these people going not dying off quickly. 99% of people living a couple hundred years ago where living in what we would consider extreme poverty so that’s basically complaining we have more people today. People without access to modern medicine, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, and education used to more or less just be people.
- bmitc 4y ago
  It is not false. There’s data to back it up. I did use the word starving, which has a gradient of meanings (see below for separate numbers for the gradients), and I did not mean dying of starvation. The latest numbers are (definitions of state in the links): * 828 million people are hungry * 345 million are experiencing acute hunger * 924 million experience severe food insecurity * 2.3 billion people experience moderate or severe food insecurity * at least 9 million people die of starvation every year https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/un-report-global-hunger-SOFI-2022-FAO/en https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/un-report-global-hunger-... https://www.concernusa.org/story/world-hunger-facts/ https://www.concernusa.org/story/world-hunger-facts/ https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-hunger-numbers-rose-to-as-many-as-828-million-in-2021 https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-h... https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/losing-25000-hunger-every-day https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/losing-25000-hunger-... World populations: * 1850: 1.2 billion * 1800: 959 million * 1750: 629 million https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=world+population+1750 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=world+population+1750 Wealth concentration has dramatically increased since the 1970s and 1800s.
  - Retric 4y ago
    You misunderstood the statistics. “As many as 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021” This is not equivalent to saying 828 million people are experiencing hunter at the same time. Your conflating the two is exactly the way these statistics get severely distorted. “Figures on actual starvation are difficult to come by, but according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the less severe condition of undernourishment currently affects about 842 million people, or about one in eight (12.5%) people in the world population.[6] “ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation Inequality isn’t the same as starvation, in the last 40 years inequality grew while starvation dramatically declined. “In 40 years, the proportion of malnourished people in the developing world has been more than halved. The proportion of starving people has decreased even faster.”
    - bmitc 4y ago
      I didn't misunderstand anything. It's defined: > Hunger: an uncomfortable or painful sensation caused by insufficient energy from diet. In this report, the term hunger is synonymous with chronic undernourishment and is measured by the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU). > Inequality isn’t the same as starvation Of course it isn't. They're correlated, but I only mentioned that in support of my comment a level above. > in the last 40 years inequality grew while starvation dramatically declined. “In 40 years, the proportion of malnourished people in the developing world has been more than halved. The proportion of starving people has decreased even faster.” Where is this coming from? I'm not sure what your point is. The numbers are what they, and the things are defined. There's not misinterpretation. If you get a different sentiment than "industrialization has increased suffering", then that's fine, but it isn't clear where that comes from.
      - Retric 4y ago
        > Where is this from It’s from the same Wikipedia article, which makes it clear starvation is a much smaller number of people than existed in the word in 1750 or even 1000. Again chronic undernourishment isn’t starvation. There a bunch of statistics saying ~850 million people regularly don’t get sufficient quantities of nutrition and calories for ideal heath is vastly different than starvation. My father was undernourished growing up in the US. He gained weight after joining the Army and was shorter than he probably should have been, but that describes the vast majority of humanity through most of human history. Even today people in the US regularly skip meals and go hungry which is a real problem that’s being addressed by real programs that are critically important. However, it’s extremely rare for people to actually starve here and we need to remember starvation is a much worse situation. So my point is this: The human body can adapt to less than ideal number of calories it’s a fairly wide range. Starvation is below the threshold of survival there is no way to adapt to it and it can quickly result in death. Misrepresenting what’s going on as starvation has real world consequences because preventing starvation related deaths is far more achievable than improving the diets of 850 million people. The actual number of starving people is relatively small which makes it an addressable problem.