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I'm often shocked at how people think history started at some point in the last 200 years. Malthus was completely right and all the historical data we've been

I'm often shocked at how people think history started at some point in the last 200 years. Malthus was completely right and all the historical data we've been able to gather has validated his views, going back tens of thousands of years. The exception is post agricultural revolution, meaning the last 150 years, which might as well be a rounding error. It won't last. Malthus was right: population is limited by food supply and any increase in food supply results ultimately in a higher population with a roughly constant standard of living.

kbutler 14y ago
> Malthus was right: population is limited by food supply and any increase in food supply results ultimately in a higher population with a roughly constant standard of living. That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time. You're asserting that we have roughly the same standard of living as people 200 years ago? 1000 years ago? 10,000 years ago?
- jvdongen 14y ago
  Well, that kinda depends on how you define standard of living of course. We live very different and longer lives today as opposed to 200 or 1000 years ago. But on a basic day-to-day level, do you think you live a significantly happier and more fulfilling live than a random someone from a 1000 years ago?
  - twoodfin 14y ago
    Yes. This is so indisputably true I wonder how you can possibly think otherwise. Even putting aside what must be something like 30 or 40 years worth of life expectancy at birth, and probably a decade or so of life expectancy as a 20-something, the median inhabitant of Earth a thousand years ago was engaged in backbreaking labor from sunrise to sunset, ate an unvaried, subsistence diet and was almost completely illiterate. The current median inhabitant might be working in a Foxconn factory, but he or she has massive health and lifestyle advantages over his or her 1000 AD counterpart.
    - giergirey 14y ago
      I was under the impression though that the 30-40 years average life expectancy is commonly misunderstood? The mean life expectancy at birth might well have been 35 years but that's dragged down by massive infant and child mortality in the first 5 years of life - if you made it to adulthood, you had a reasonable chance of making it to 60. I'm not sure claims about a topic such as happiness can ever be "indisputably" true. Would you not even entertain the possibility that your "median inhabitant 1000 years ago" was actually quite happy with her unvaried subsistence diet, since it was a little bit more varied than her that of her poorer neighbour, and not much less varied than her much richer cousin's? I doubt he would feel unhappy or unfulfilled for being illiterate - in his sphere of existence, what would he have read? To whom would he have written? Do you feel constantly unfulfilled though being unable to communicate with dolphins, or through being unable to interpret Tibetan Prayer Flags, or (perhaps more topically) through not regularly listening to oral poetry passed down from bard to bard? I suspect not - because you have no expectation of being able to do these things.

kbutler 14y ago

> Malthus was right: population is limited by food supply and any increase in food supply results ultimately in a higher population with a roughly constant standard of living. That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time. You're asserting that we have roughly the same standard of living as people 200 years ago? 1000 years ago? 10,000 years ago?

jvdongen 14y ago
Well, that kinda depends on how you define standard of living of course. We live very different and longer lives today as opposed to 200 or 1000 years ago. But on a basic day-to-day level, do you think you live a significantly happier and more fulfilling live than a random someone from a 1000 years ago?
- twoodfin 14y ago
  Yes. This is so indisputably true I wonder how you can possibly think otherwise. Even putting aside what must be something like 30 or 40 years worth of life expectancy at birth, and probably a decade or so of life expectancy as a 20-something, the median inhabitant of Earth a thousand years ago was engaged in backbreaking labor from sunrise to sunset, ate an unvaried, subsistence diet and was almost completely illiterate. The current median inhabitant might be working in a Foxconn factory, but he or she has massive health and lifestyle advantages over his or her 1000 AD counterpart.
  - giergirey 14y ago
    I was under the impression though that the 30-40 years average life expectancy is commonly misunderstood? The mean life expectancy at birth might well have been 35 years but that's dragged down by massive infant and child mortality in the first 5 years of life - if you made it to adulthood, you had a reasonable chance of making it to 60. I'm not sure claims about a topic such as happiness can ever be "indisputably" true. Would you not even entertain the possibility that your "median inhabitant 1000 years ago" was actually quite happy with her unvaried subsistence diet, since it was a little bit more varied than her that of her poorer neighbour, and not much less varied than her much richer cousin's? I doubt he would feel unhappy or unfulfilled for being illiterate - in his sphere of existence, what would he have read? To whom would he have written? Do you feel constantly unfulfilled though being unable to communicate with dolphins, or through being unable to interpret Tibetan Prayer Flags, or (perhaps more topically) through not regularly listening to oral poetry passed down from bard to bard? I suspect not - because you have no expectation of being able to do these things.