5 ms·

agree, looking at human history and climate history(30k thousand years back) we are in a blissful time with human lifespan being close to an all time high, war

agree, looking at human history and climate history(30k thousand years back) we are in a blissful time with human lifespan being close to an all time high, war and famine are at all time lows. Medical advances are letting people who would have died or had a horrible existence lead normal lives. I read a ton of history and science books and I feel like people just have no idea how bad things used to be. And we go back even further there were things like the ice age, imagine how miserable your life would have been living through thousand year long winters with no warm weather at all.

haswell 3y ago
Humans will always adapt to the current status quo. It is why we have been such a dominant species. The conditions of 30K years ago are interesting to consider, but also largely irrelevant to a current population adapted to the current status quo. It will be of little comfort to reflect on the extreme environments of the past when current standards of living decline relative to what they are today. We’ll adapt to whatever new local lows are to come, but for many people this conversation will always be about change relative to now and current expectations about what it means to live a “normal” life.
- cm2012 3y ago
  Normal life is going to better 20 years from now, just like it's much better now than 20 years ago.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Define better. Do it with empirical attributes.
    - cm2012 3y ago
      Higher GDP per capita. Lower murder rate. A lot more tech. Better health outcomes. Higher life expectancy.
      - haswell 3y ago
        Higher GDP means little to nothing to the average consumer, and more tech is absolutely not automatically better. We're still coming to terms with the harms of the current and last generation tech, to say nothing of the extreme shifts ahead as AI/ML continue to explode. Murder rates are rising, and there seems to be very little political will to make the systemic changes needed to address this. Why would life expectancy continue to climb? Setting aside issues related to extreme weather and/or forced migrations in some regions, and taking into account recent trends like extreme spikes in colorectal cancer in younger adults for reasons we have yet to understand, and increasing awareness of the health impacts of various chemicals, plastics, etc, it seems problematic to assume higher life expectancy. Health outcomes may improve in certain categories, but it seems almost certain that it will degrade in others.

haswell 3y ago

Humans will always adapt to the current status quo. It is why we have been such a dominant species. The conditions of 30K years ago are interesting to consider, but also largely irrelevant to a current population adapted to the current status quo. It will be of little comfort to reflect on the extreme environments of the past when current standards of living decline relative to what they are today. We’ll adapt to whatever new local lows are to come, but for many people this conversation will always be about change relative to now and current expectations about what it means to live a “normal” life.

cm2012 3y ago
Normal life is going to better 20 years from now, just like it's much better now than 20 years ago.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Define better. Do it with empirical attributes.
  - cm2012 3y ago
    Higher GDP per capita. Lower murder rate. A lot more tech. Better health outcomes. Higher life expectancy.
    - haswell 3y ago
      Higher GDP means little to nothing to the average consumer, and more tech is absolutely not automatically better. We're still coming to terms with the harms of the current and last generation tech, to say nothing of the extreme shifts ahead as AI/ML continue to explode. Murder rates are rising, and there seems to be very little political will to make the systemic changes needed to address this. Why would life expectancy continue to climb? Setting aside issues related to extreme weather and/or forced migrations in some regions, and taking into account recent trends like extreme spikes in colorectal cancer in younger adults for reasons we have yet to understand, and increasing awareness of the health impacts of various chemicals, plastics, etc, it seems problematic to assume higher life expectancy. Health outcomes may improve in certain categories, but it seems almost certain that it will degrade in others.