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I don't disagree that we live in a relatively good time right now, but I do wonder if this is the best it has ever been in the history of humanity. We have mor

I don't disagree that we live in a relatively good time right now, but I do wonder if this is the best it has ever been in the history of humanity. We have more pollution (air, water, noise, light), more cancer, more heart disease, more obesity, more addiction, more suicide, much worse environmental impact, and so on (though these are the worst that I can think of off the top of my head). Your points about safety, violence, money, etc, are all good, and there are many other really positive things about the present, for sure, but it is not clear to me that we are absolutely better off than at any time in the past. There were some bad times, and there is too much nostalgia by well-off people for past times when they were well-off while most others were not. I think that things are in general pretty good right now. Modern medicine alone makes me prefer to live now than wish I were some scruffy medieval peasant. We should recognize that we have paid a huge price for how we live now, and that price might not have been worth it. I don't know how we judge one way or the other. Anyway. I wish I could see the stars. I wish there was still real wilderness. I wish that PFAS weren't almost literally everywhere. I wish farmers selected for flavor rather than size or density. Etc. Now, the 1990s! That was the best time in human history. ;)

pb7 3y ago
Not interested in commenting on the rest but do we have more cancer or are we better at detecting cancer?
- Retric 3y ago
  No both the absolute and rate of of cancers has increased. Even if you ignore environmental factors older people get more cancer and we have more older people today. Age adjusted cancer rates for some kinds of cancers have dropped because fewer people smoke etc, but it’s not universal across all cancers. We do also detect more cancers early, but that also makes cancer treatment look better. Aka 5 year survival rates look better when you start the clock sooner.
  - pb7 3y ago
    You touch upon it in your comment and giving it zero weight for some reason: you can’t develop most types of cancer if you die at 30 (extreme example).
    - Retric 3y ago
      Because it’s irrelevant when the global age adjusted cancer rates are increasing overall. An increasing number of people under 30 are developing cancer. America is only 4% of global population, if you want a better picture look at China and India which have both skyrocketed pollution levels recently.
- prepend 3y ago
  Also we live longer so it’s more likely to detect and die from cancer. Even over 100 years ago is true incidence of cancer higher? Not to mention why we would think we have more cancer now than 1000 years ago. Or perhaps we have more cancer but that’s because people aren’t dying of other things first, so it doesn’t matter we have more cancer. This is the kind of counterproductive examples I find people arguing about. Of course there are more vehicle accidents now, but that’s because there’s more people driving, not that cars are more dangerous.
  - kn0where 3y ago
    Cars have absolutely gotten more dangerous as they’ve increased in size — for anyone outside of one.
    - prepend 3y ago
      Yet vehicle mortality rate has decreased [0] and pedestrian mortality rate is a bit trickier as over the past 40 years it dropped and then climbed back to where it was in absolute numbers [1]. So it’s definitely less dangerous based on the rate of drivers, passengers and pedestrians who die each year. Please share any better metrics you like for showing increase in danger. [0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot#yearly-snapshot https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearl... [1] https://www.axios.com/2023/06/23/pedestrian-deaths-cars-suvs-roads-unsafe https://www.axios.com/2023/06/23/pedestrian-deaths-cars-suvs...
enoch_r 3y ago
I think you have your rose-colored glasses on when looking at the past. Air pollution: down since the 1990s. [1][2][3] Water pollution: down since the 1990s. [4][5] Noise/light pollution: definitely up since the 1990s, agreed there. Cancer: US deaths are way down since the 1990s, though it's cheating a bit since that was the top of the smoking-related spike in lung cancer. Still, other cancer deaths are way down since then too. [6][7] (Edit: worldwide this looks worse and things have increased lately, see: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-cancer-by-age?facet=metric https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-can...) Heart disease: can't find long term stats on this quickly, but cardiovascular mortality is way down. [8] Obesity, addiction, and suicide: certainly up. "Much worse environmental impact," I think the decline in air and water pollution makes this debatable. Climate change is a bit of a weird one, because it's definitely getting worse, but at the same time, the worst-case scenarios (greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated into the indefinite future) is becoming less likely. [9] So the derivative is bad, but the second derivative is good. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-pollution?country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-poll... [2] https://www.slowboring.com/p/wildfires-have-partially-reversed?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=159185&post_id=126860879&isFreemail=false https://www.slowboring.com/p/wildfires-have-partially-revers... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-pollution https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-poll... [4] https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-good-news-on-americas-cleaner?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-good-news-on-americas-clean... [5] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/water-and-sanitation?tab=chart&facet=none&country=IND~USA~KEN~OWID_WRL~BGD~ZAF~CHN&Resource=Drinking+water&Level+of+Access=Safely+managed&Residence=Total&Relative+to+population=Share+of+population https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/water-and-sanitation?ta... [6] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates-in-the-us https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates-in-the... [7] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates?tab=ch... [8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5268076/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5268076/ [9] https://www.slowboring.com/p/people-need-to-hear-the-good-news?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email https://www.slowboring.com/p/people-need-to-hear-the-good-ne...
- DanBC 3y ago

pb7 3y ago

Not interested in commenting on the rest but do we have more cancer or are we better at detecting cancer?

Retric 3y ago
No both the absolute and rate of of cancers has increased. Even if you ignore environmental factors older people get more cancer and we have more older people today. Age adjusted cancer rates for some kinds of cancers have dropped because fewer people smoke etc, but it’s not universal across all cancers. We do also detect more cancers early, but that also makes cancer treatment look better. Aka 5 year survival rates look better when you start the clock sooner.
- pb7 3y ago
  You touch upon it in your comment and giving it zero weight for some reason: you can’t develop most types of cancer if you die at 30 (extreme example).
  - Retric 3y ago
    Because it’s irrelevant when the global age adjusted cancer rates are increasing overall. An increasing number of people under 30 are developing cancer. America is only 4% of global population, if you want a better picture look at China and India which have both skyrocketed pollution levels recently.
prepend 3y ago
Also we live longer so it’s more likely to detect and die from cancer. Even over 100 years ago is true incidence of cancer higher? Not to mention why we would think we have more cancer now than 1000 years ago. Or perhaps we have more cancer but that’s because people aren’t dying of other things first, so it doesn’t matter we have more cancer. This is the kind of counterproductive examples I find people arguing about. Of course there are more vehicle accidents now, but that’s because there’s more people driving, not that cars are more dangerous.
- kn0where 3y ago
  Cars have absolutely gotten more dangerous as they’ve increased in size — for anyone outside of one.
  - prepend 3y ago
    Yet vehicle mortality rate has decreased [0] and pedestrian mortality rate is a bit trickier as over the past 40 years it dropped and then climbed back to where it was in absolute numbers [1]. So it’s definitely less dangerous based on the rate of drivers, passengers and pedestrians who die each year. Please share any better metrics you like for showing increase in danger. [0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot#yearly-snapshot https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearl... [1] https://www.axios.com/2023/06/23/pedestrian-deaths-cars-suvs-roads-unsafe https://www.axios.com/2023/06/23/pedestrian-deaths-cars-suvs...

enoch_r 3y ago

I think you have your rose-colored glasses on when looking at the past. Air pollution: down since the 1990s. [1][2][3] Water pollution: down since the 1990s. [4][5] Noise/light pollution: definitely up since the 1990s, agreed there. Cancer: US deaths are way down since the 1990s, though it's cheating a bit since that was the top of the smoking-related spike in lung cancer. Still, other cancer deaths are way down since then too. [6][7] (Edit: worldwide this looks worse and things have increased lately, see: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-cancer-by-age?facet=metric https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-can...) Heart disease: can't find long term stats on this quickly, but cardiovascular mortality is way down. [8] Obesity, addiction, and suicide: certainly up. "Much worse environmental impact," I think the decline in air and water pollution makes this debatable. Climate change is a bit of a weird one, because it's definitely getting worse, but at the same time, the worst-case scenarios (greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated into the indefinite future) is becoming less likely. [9] So the derivative is bad, but the second derivative is good. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-pollution?country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-poll... [2] https://www.slowboring.com/p/wildfires-have-partially-reversed?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=159185&post_id=126860879&isFreemail=false https://www.slowboring.com/p/wildfires-have-partially-revers... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-pollution https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-poll... [4] https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-good-news-on-americas-cleaner?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-good-news-on-americas-clean... [5] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/water-and-sanitation?tab=chart&facet=none&country=IND~USA~KEN~OWID_WRL~BGD~ZAF~CHN&Resource=Drinking+water&Level+of+Access=Safely+managed&Residence=Total&Relative+to+population=Share+of+population https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/water-and-sanitation?ta... [6] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates-in-the-us https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates-in-the... [7] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates?tab=ch... [8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5268076/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5268076/ [9] https://www.slowboring.com/p/people-need-to-hear-the-good-news?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email https://www.slowboring.com/p/people-need-to-hear-the-good-ne...

DanBC 3y ago