11 ms·

The downside of using modern metrics to estimate the happiness of past people is that you won't ever measure the stuff that we've lost. We'll never really know,

The downside of using modern metrics to estimate the happiness of past people is that you won't ever measure the stuff that we've lost. We'll never really know, and you should look at all such comparisons with deep suspicion (especially eyeballing you, Steven Pinker)

Larrikin 2y ago
What did we lose that you think would make us happier? I can only think of things certain people lost that would make them happier at the expense of making others as miserable as possible.
- toufka 2y ago
  A representative idea: if you are the one to kill a deer to eat, you get a little bit of each cut - rib, loin, filet, heart, etc. When was the last time most people ate a filet mignon? And if you gather food like berries and fruits - you (at least sometimes) get to eat foods ripened that day in the field. How many today get that luxury? And if one of the things that provides joy to humans is to prepare their family’s food - many folks today would be disqualified.
- DaoVeles 2y ago
  Now these are cherry picked which in my previous comment on this is cheating a little but I will give it a try. At a personal level, tools/equipment that is self serviceable and can be maintained for a long life span. While some of this is still around, it is much more difficult to find. At a moderate level. More time for family and community, unfortunately this one area that looking back we have slid backwards in. We are definitely better than the open century of industrialism but before that, hours were much more moderate, you also mostly worked near or at where you live. At a wide lens angle. A vast majority of our technique is now having the blow back of ecological destruction/instability and a long period of climatic instability. The kind of thing that makes planning 7 generations ahead near impossible except on the grandest and somewhat vaguest terms.
  - southernplaces7 2y ago
    Really? These are the things to lament having lost in comparison to all the things that humans have gained? Today you can still buy simple tools and equipment that are very long lasting, or you can choose modern conveniences. Either way, you actually have that choice, and buying either won't cost you a huge percentage of your wages as was the case in preindustrial times in which any manufactured or produced goods were enormously expensive by tendency. People in modern times have more time for community and family than at any other point in history. This applies especially if they don't pursue the kind of material hamster wheel that many do. Almost anyone wanting to live at the subsistence levels of preindustrial societies could do so today with far less work than the people at that time endured to achieve the same. I think you're grossly understating how hard and long the work hours just to feed a family and literally keep it from death were prior to (at the most) 200 years ago. As for your last point, the science on climate change doesn't predict the end of the world at all. Go read the IPCC's own worst case scenarios. They certainly don't predict our extinction. What's more, do you really think people in the 17th century felt any ability to plan 7 generations ahead, or easily avoided living in grimly filthy conditions at a level that was superior to today?
    - DaoVeles 2y ago
      TO be fair, these are shoot from the hip responses. I'm not as quick thinking as I used to be. I'm sure I could have some better examples if you give me a day or two. I don't really work on the time of internet comment sections all the time. I think the angle you have is one of assuming I am advocating that "things used to be better!". I am not, I am saying it is possible to pick parts of the past that worked, figure out a way past the unintended issues of today and combine them into something better. This is essentially the entire idea of the Solar Punk movement. Also I wasn't talking about the work hours 200 years ago, more like 1,000 years ago. Typical work days were about 4 hours a day in most societies. There are stories from France about 500 years ago about just how much spare time people used to have, it was kind of wild. Boring yes, but it was also because you can only grow so much food. The issue is that that kind of economy that is outside of the monetary system cannot be charted and graded accurately. There are lot so people in southern India that on paper are incredibly poor but in reality are very self reliant. And yes I have read large parts of various IPCC reports. No, we are not going extinct. I didn't say anything about extinction. But a sizable fall is still a big wallop to industrial civilization even if it isn't a fatal blow. While folks may not be directly planning 7 generations, things were more stable from an environmental sense that many could assume things like food supply (on average) would be fine. The big issues then were much more political.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  > What did we lose that you think would make us happier? I strongly suspect any example I provide will be attacked, so I recommend to use your imagination. I think you can do better than this. If you really want an example I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman, who can write better than I can, who is thoughtful in his choice in how he uses research versus poetic license, who has already responded to critique on the novel. There's plenty worth critiquing but it's better than assuming the absolute lack of any loss. And I'd like to emphasize I don't believe in past utopia (I think anarcho-primitivism is equally lacking in imagination, perhaps even more so)—just that the idea of one-dimensional progress is moronic. EDIT: To add on to this, Graeber points out that there's a wide span of time in between the invention of agriculture (~12kya) and the beginning of what we collectively agree is civilization (~8kya). Why this delay, if sedentary farming and market-oriented distribution offers such obvious benefits? EDIT2: spelling EDIT3: KSR context
  - Larrikin 2y ago
    I assume that it is nothing if you can't provide any examples. Slaves, blood sports, women traded for power and sex are all the things that first came to mind Edit: It's also bad form to edit your comment after it's been replied to without indicating you edited it.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - darby_nine 2y ago
      > Edit: It's also bad form to edit your comment after it's been replied to without indicating you edited it. yea my bad, I didn't expect you to reply so quickly.
    - DaoVeles 2y ago
      There is a big question with Slavery and Sex trade. UN estimates about 50 million people today but I have seen some figures that put it closer to 280 million. https://www.un.org/en/delegate/50-million-people-modern-slavery-un-report https://www.un.org/en/delegate/50-million-people-modern-slav... Depending on if you are going by total numbers or a percentage of the population can sway the messaging on this wildly.
- conception 2y ago
  Free time.
  - MattGaiser 2y ago
    Arguably you could have more free time than ever before and maintain a similar standard of living to historical standards in many places, but that option isn’t popular. Especially true of software engineers. Take a mediocre paying remote job at a mediocre non-tech firm, work 2 hours a day as the work is easy, and spend the rest on yourself. But I’ve never heard of anyone doing that.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Individual people could in theory have more free time, but at scale our economy is dependent on people working long hours etc. Someone’s got to be awake at 3am for a hospital emergency room to function 24/7. Our convince often directly requires someone to suffer.
  - relativ575 2y ago
    Are you sure? People of the old time spent most of their time worrying about having food on the table. I doubt they could have time for FB if it was to exist at the time
- Retric 2y ago
  There’s more obvious things people already mentioned, but for less obvious examples. A night sky without light pollution and darker nights from a sleep perspective. Large families and extended families. Your great grandparents likely had 5+ siblings. 100ppm lower CO2 levels had a meaningful impact on cognitive and physical performance. Less intrusive advertising such as pumping gas without videos popping up. Natural sounds and smells in a world without massive pollution. Edit: It’s easy to say the modern world is better based on metrics which exclude meaningful downsides. Job security doesn’t get tracked the way unemployment rate does. In 1790 individual members in the House of Representatives represented 39,000 people (though a low percentage of that could actually vote), today it’s closer to 800,000. But nobody is saying your voice is less important every year.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  I can only speak for myself, but knowing where my food came from makes me extremely happy and thats something that we have largely lost today. I spent about a year raising two hogs, babying them when compared to how almost anyone raises pigs. They loved their lives, I know exactly what they ate, and I know exactly what their last moments were. I just started curing another round of bacon a couple days ago, and when I get to enjoy it I know exactly how much work and love went into it. I don't think this process made anyone as miserable as possible, and it makes me much happier than when I didn't k ow where my food came from, how it was raised, or how it was processed.
  - DaoVeles 2y ago
    While I don't eat meat for various reasons, I always appreciate homesteaders. To ensure that the creatures they shepherd have as few bad moments as possible. To have hogs and to know they will only have one bad day.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  Well, I have already lost the kind of food to which I had access as a child, because now I cannot buy anything similar from anywhere, at least as a city dweller. When I was spending my vacations with my grandparents as a child, they had a huge garden with an astonishing number of different kinds of fruits. They were planned in such a way that most of the year, from early spring until the beginning of the winter there was at least one kind of fruit that became ready for harvest every week. Those fruits had flavors that cannot be matched in any way by those that can be bought from a supermarket, which are selected to look beautiful and to have a long shelf life. Not even at the local markets where farmers sell their products can I find anything as good as the fruit cultivars of my grandparents. Similarly for meat. The meat of the truly free-range chicken or of the suckling pigs that I could eat at my grandparents was unbelievably more tasty than of the industrially-grown animals. The vast majority of the people living today, who live in cities and eat only what can be bought there, have never tasted anything so good and they cannot imagine such tastes. Even when I have traveled through rural zones, I have never seen again any garden remotely similar to what my grandparents had a half of century ago or any similar fruit varieties. I would certainly be happier if I could ever eat again such food. Except for food, I agree that everything else is much more comfortable today and I prefer it over what was available a half of century earlier.
  - relativ575 2y ago
    Well, now you have access to other kinds of food that you didn't have when you were a kid, such as international cuisines. Who is to say which way is better? Although it's certainly the case that it'd be ideal if you could have both
    - DaoVeles 2y ago
      As a complete aside. To be Malthusian, there is the greater question of long term genuine sustainability of this abundance. Are we as a global society just spending big on the credit card of energy surplus disregarding the payback, or is this a genuine long term gain? I guess we will have to wait until the year 2300 to have that answer.
  - deanCommie 2y ago
- metabagel 2y ago
  Where I live, we’ve lost the ability to see most of the stars at night. The mass extinction of many species means that the world which used to be teaming with life is now mostly just teaming with human life. We lost our connection to the natural world. We’ve lost the vast open spaces where you could roam freely although perhaps not always safely. Sure, it’s a trade off, but it’s ridiculous to pretend we haven’t lost anything. We pay for our high standard of living with anxiety and neuroses.
- paganel 2y ago
  Not the OP, but we lost the spirit of community. We’ve got way over board when promoting individualism as a way of life.
  - DaoVeles 2y ago
    I suspect that as energy per capita goes up, the direct reliance on immediate others goes down. Paradoxically because there is now so many other people you can depend on to provide goods and services. If the supply drops, this trend will go in reverse. Probably would be very messy on the way down however.
DaoVeles 2y ago
I wouldn't mind Steven Pinker so much if it wasn't for the blatant cherry picking. Always trying to make today look a good as possible and the past as terrible as possible. It just produces bias on both sides when like usual - it is full of greys. We are doing some cool things nowadays, yes there is some blow back to account for. The past had a lot of awful things, but there were something things we did that we should consider integrating with modern techniques. And so on.
pvg 2y ago
The article is not really about happiness estimates but if it were, the case would be easier to make - most people are happier not having half their children die.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
southernplaces7 2y ago
The vastly overwhelming body of evidence clearly indicates that today humanity is materially and by nearly all concrete measurements of human well-being better off than at any time in all its long history. This paints a powerful case for humanity also being psychologically and emotionally better off, on average, than at any older time in history since, as should be obvious, dodging starvation, random war, plague and een minor medical problems becoming deadly isn't exactly conducive to being as happy as you could be without these things. If you want to make a case for the "natural" life of simple pleasures, sure, it could be attractive contrasted against the cacophony of modern digital and other distractions, but here's a basic thing: If you want that kind of life today, within the relative safety net of modern medicine and economic support in a wider sense, you're free to pursue it as intensely as you like, and more safely than you ever could have before. If on the other hand, you, living in some grimmer, dirtier past, wanted any other sort of life, the choice didn't even really exist unless you were one of an incredibly tiny minority that formed the elites of society. And even among these people, the slightest infection could randomly kill you, losing your eyesight with age was a gradual sentence into blindness, and god help you if you ever were to have any major dental or surgical needs that are today fixable with little fuss. Whatever you might think of Steven Pinker, the guy's fundamental argument is broadly true even if some specific details might be cherry-picked(and i'd like to see which one's you're referring your suspicion to) Again though, feel free to list the stuff we've lost. I'd love to see what you refer to and balance it against what we've gained.
- harimau777 2y ago
  Speaking from a US perspective, a lot of people have lost their connection to society and to a sense of meaningful cultural identity. There's a crisis of singleness that hasn't been present in much, although not all, of human history. Home ownership is way down. At various points throughout human history it was common for people to own their own homes. Most people have very little autonomy in their day to day work. In the past most people worked on small scale farms and cottage industries where they didn't have layers upon layers of middle managers micromanaging them.
  - DaoVeles 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jbgt 2y ago
I recently discovered a blog by a historian that tries to describe life as it was. Here's the post about what's needed to feed society with bread (there are many others) https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/ https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they... To my understanding, much of the work was backbreaking, disease was a big problem, starvation around the corner every year. And governance and freedoms were mostly reduced to service to a local strongman. And this is before the industrial revolution, working in insalubrious factories, belching smoke steam engines etc. Nowadays I think things are significantly better for the majority of people.
- DaoVeles 2y ago
  Just to add a few things. Hygiene theory has gone a long way to alleviate some of the more problematic disease issues. I have said that if we went full Mad Max (I don't think we are), hygiene theory would survive because of how useful it is. Starvation is one of those issues of the odd cycles of nature. Many I have spoken with that do back to the land farming have said, on a 5 year average calories aren't an issue. The problem is it usually means 3 bumper years followed by two starvation years. Thru modern agriculture we have both made systems of storage and fertilizers that flatten over these issues. As for the governance of strongman. There was the flip side of, they couldn't strong arm people TOO much because if enough people figured it was worth over throwing them, the boss would be overthrown with violence or death. It was risky being at the top, there was a reason why the kings thrown was backed up to a wall. Stops the assassin coming from behind.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  The problem is that in leaving much of undesirable things behind, we've also left many of the desirable things behind and it's not entirely clear if we can ever reclaim them in society as it is. One paragraph stuck out quite clearly to me in your link: --- "Of course our farmers don’t care about maximum efficiency (because that means for maximum efficiency of people who aren’t the farmers eating the surplus). They care about marrying, having families, raising children, keeping friends, staying close to loved ones and so on. Farmers, after all, are people, not mere tools of agricultural production (we will talk about non-free farmers next time) and so they do not serve their farmers, their farms serve the needs of their families." --- And "friends", as the article also describes, meant something very different. It was not infrequent that friends could be entire households where relationships would last for generations. Modern life has really done away with most of these things. I'd also say that many things people look on as negative, like difficult labor, are not necessarily so. I spent a fair amount of time when I was young working in construction and it was some of the most rewarding paid work I have ever done, by a wide margin. If it paid as well as the path I ended up taking, I would have absolutely stayed in construction for as long as my body held out. That last part might sound grim, but it's the exact same in fields like software development. Over time your mind will slow, as will your motivation to keep up with the latest API, language, and just general trends. At that point you're going to be headed for 'early retirement', quite likely even earlier than a guy working construction - with construction workers having a median age of around 40!

Larrikin 2y ago

What did we lose that you think would make us happier? I can only think of things certain people lost that would make them happier at the expense of making others as miserable as possible.

toufka 2y ago
A representative idea: if you are the one to kill a deer to eat, you get a little bit of each cut - rib, loin, filet, heart, etc. When was the last time most people ate a filet mignon? And if you gather food like berries and fruits - you (at least sometimes) get to eat foods ripened that day in the field. How many today get that luxury? And if one of the things that provides joy to humans is to prepare their family’s food - many folks today would be disqualified.
DaoVeles 2y ago
Now these are cherry picked which in my previous comment on this is cheating a little but I will give it a try. At a personal level, tools/equipment that is self serviceable and can be maintained for a long life span. While some of this is still around, it is much more difficult to find. At a moderate level. More time for family and community, unfortunately this one area that looking back we have slid backwards in. We are definitely better than the open century of industrialism but before that, hours were much more moderate, you also mostly worked near or at where you live. At a wide lens angle. A vast majority of our technique is now having the blow back of ecological destruction/instability and a long period of climatic instability. The kind of thing that makes planning 7 generations ahead near impossible except on the grandest and somewhat vaguest terms.
- southernplaces7 2y ago
  Really? These are the things to lament having lost in comparison to all the things that humans have gained? Today you can still buy simple tools and equipment that are very long lasting, or you can choose modern conveniences. Either way, you actually have that choice, and buying either won't cost you a huge percentage of your wages as was the case in preindustrial times in which any manufactured or produced goods were enormously expensive by tendency. People in modern times have more time for community and family than at any other point in history. This applies especially if they don't pursue the kind of material hamster wheel that many do. Almost anyone wanting to live at the subsistence levels of preindustrial societies could do so today with far less work than the people at that time endured to achieve the same. I think you're grossly understating how hard and long the work hours just to feed a family and literally keep it from death were prior to (at the most) 200 years ago. As for your last point, the science on climate change doesn't predict the end of the world at all. Go read the IPCC's own worst case scenarios. They certainly don't predict our extinction. What's more, do you really think people in the 17th century felt any ability to plan 7 generations ahead, or easily avoided living in grimly filthy conditions at a level that was superior to today?
  - DaoVeles 2y ago
    TO be fair, these are shoot from the hip responses. I'm not as quick thinking as I used to be. I'm sure I could have some better examples if you give me a day or two. I don't really work on the time of internet comment sections all the time. I think the angle you have is one of assuming I am advocating that "things used to be better!". I am not, I am saying it is possible to pick parts of the past that worked, figure out a way past the unintended issues of today and combine them into something better. This is essentially the entire idea of the Solar Punk movement. Also I wasn't talking about the work hours 200 years ago, more like 1,000 years ago. Typical work days were about 4 hours a day in most societies. There are stories from France about 500 years ago about just how much spare time people used to have, it was kind of wild. Boring yes, but it was also because you can only grow so much food. The issue is that that kind of economy that is outside of the monetary system cannot be charted and graded accurately. There are lot so people in southern India that on paper are incredibly poor but in reality are very self reliant. And yes I have read large parts of various IPCC reports. No, we are not going extinct. I didn't say anything about extinction. But a sizable fall is still a big wallop to industrial civilization even if it isn't a fatal blow. While folks may not be directly planning 7 generations, things were more stable from an environmental sense that many could assume things like food supply (on average) would be fine. The big issues then were much more political.
darby_nine 2y ago
> What did we lose that you think would make us happier? I strongly suspect any example I provide will be attacked, so I recommend to use your imagination. I think you can do better than this. If you really want an example I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman, who can write better than I can, who is thoughtful in his choice in how he uses research versus poetic license, who has already responded to critique on the novel. There's plenty worth critiquing but it's better than assuming the absolute lack of any loss. And I'd like to emphasize I don't believe in past utopia (I think anarcho-primitivism is equally lacking in imagination, perhaps even more so)—just that the idea of one-dimensional progress is moronic. EDIT: To add on to this, Graeber points out that there's a wide span of time in between the invention of agriculture (~12kya) and the beginning of what we collectively agree is civilization (~8kya). Why this delay, if sedentary farming and market-oriented distribution offers such obvious benefits? EDIT2: spelling EDIT3: KSR context
- Larrikin 2y ago
  I assume that it is nothing if you can't provide any examples. Slaves, blood sports, women traded for power and sex are all the things that first came to mind Edit: It's also bad form to edit your comment after it's been replied to without indicating you edited it.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    > Edit: It's also bad form to edit your comment after it's been replied to without indicating you edited it. yea my bad, I didn't expect you to reply so quickly.
  - DaoVeles 2y ago
    There is a big question with Slavery and Sex trade. UN estimates about 50 million people today but I have seen some figures that put it closer to 280 million. https://www.un.org/en/delegate/50-million-people-modern-slavery-un-report https://www.un.org/en/delegate/50-million-people-modern-slav... Depending on if you are going by total numbers or a percentage of the population can sway the messaging on this wildly.
conception 2y ago
Free time.
- MattGaiser 2y ago
  Arguably you could have more free time than ever before and maintain a similar standard of living to historical standards in many places, but that option isn’t popular. Especially true of software engineers. Take a mediocre paying remote job at a mediocre non-tech firm, work 2 hours a day as the work is easy, and spend the rest on yourself. But I’ve never heard of anyone doing that.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Individual people could in theory have more free time, but at scale our economy is dependent on people working long hours etc. Someone’s got to be awake at 3am for a hospital emergency room to function 24/7. Our convince often directly requires someone to suffer.
- relativ575 2y ago
  Are you sure? People of the old time spent most of their time worrying about having food on the table. I doubt they could have time for FB if it was to exist at the time
Retric 2y ago
There’s more obvious things people already mentioned, but for less obvious examples. A night sky without light pollution and darker nights from a sleep perspective. Large families and extended families. Your great grandparents likely had 5+ siblings. 100ppm lower CO2 levels had a meaningful impact on cognitive and physical performance. Less intrusive advertising such as pumping gas without videos popping up. Natural sounds and smells in a world without massive pollution. Edit: It’s easy to say the modern world is better based on metrics which exclude meaningful downsides. Job security doesn’t get tracked the way unemployment rate does. In 1790 individual members in the House of Representatives represented 39,000 people (though a low percentage of that could actually vote), today it’s closer to 800,000. But nobody is saying your voice is less important every year.
_heimdall 2y ago
I can only speak for myself, but knowing where my food came from makes me extremely happy and thats something that we have largely lost today. I spent about a year raising two hogs, babying them when compared to how almost anyone raises pigs. They loved their lives, I know exactly what they ate, and I know exactly what their last moments were. I just started curing another round of bacon a couple days ago, and when I get to enjoy it I know exactly how much work and love went into it. I don't think this process made anyone as miserable as possible, and it makes me much happier than when I didn't k ow where my food came from, how it was raised, or how it was processed.
- DaoVeles 2y ago
  While I don't eat meat for various reasons, I always appreciate homesteaders. To ensure that the creatures they shepherd have as few bad moments as possible. To have hogs and to know they will only have one bad day.
adrian_b 2y ago
Well, I have already lost the kind of food to which I had access as a child, because now I cannot buy anything similar from anywhere, at least as a city dweller. When I was spending my vacations with my grandparents as a child, they had a huge garden with an astonishing number of different kinds of fruits. They were planned in such a way that most of the year, from early spring until the beginning of the winter there was at least one kind of fruit that became ready for harvest every week. Those fruits had flavors that cannot be matched in any way by those that can be bought from a supermarket, which are selected to look beautiful and to have a long shelf life. Not even at the local markets where farmers sell their products can I find anything as good as the fruit cultivars of my grandparents. Similarly for meat. The meat of the truly free-range chicken or of the suckling pigs that I could eat at my grandparents was unbelievably more tasty than of the industrially-grown animals. The vast majority of the people living today, who live in cities and eat only what can be bought there, have never tasted anything so good and they cannot imagine such tastes. Even when I have traveled through rural zones, I have never seen again any garden remotely similar to what my grandparents had a half of century ago or any similar fruit varieties. I would certainly be happier if I could ever eat again such food. Except for food, I agree that everything else is much more comfortable today and I prefer it over what was available a half of century earlier.
- relativ575 2y ago
  Well, now you have access to other kinds of food that you didn't have when you were a kid, such as international cuisines. Who is to say which way is better? Although it's certainly the case that it'd be ideal if you could have both
  - DaoVeles 2y ago
    As a complete aside. To be Malthusian, there is the greater question of long term genuine sustainability of this abundance. Are we as a global society just spending big on the credit card of energy surplus disregarding the payback, or is this a genuine long term gain? I guess we will have to wait until the year 2300 to have that answer.
- deanCommie 2y ago
metabagel 2y ago
Where I live, we’ve lost the ability to see most of the stars at night. The mass extinction of many species means that the world which used to be teaming with life is now mostly just teaming with human life. We lost our connection to the natural world. We’ve lost the vast open spaces where you could roam freely although perhaps not always safely. Sure, it’s a trade off, but it’s ridiculous to pretend we haven’t lost anything. We pay for our high standard of living with anxiety and neuroses.
paganel 2y ago
Not the OP, but we lost the spirit of community. We’ve got way over board when promoting individualism as a way of life.
- DaoVeles 2y ago
  I suspect that as energy per capita goes up, the direct reliance on immediate others goes down. Paradoxically because there is now so many other people you can depend on to provide goods and services. If the supply drops, this trend will go in reverse. Probably would be very messy on the way down however.

DaoVeles 2y ago

I wouldn't mind Steven Pinker so much if it wasn't for the blatant cherry picking. Always trying to make today look a good as possible and the past as terrible as possible. It just produces bias on both sides when like usual - it is full of greys. We are doing some cool things nowadays, yes there is some blow back to account for. The past had a lot of awful things, but there were something things we did that we should consider integrating with modern techniques. And so on.

pvg 2y ago

The article is not really about happiness estimates but if it were, the case would be easier to make - most people are happier not having half their children die.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

southernplaces7 2y ago

The vastly overwhelming body of evidence clearly indicates that today humanity is materially and by nearly all concrete measurements of human well-being better off than at any time in all its long history. This paints a powerful case for humanity also being psychologically and emotionally better off, on average, than at any older time in history since, as should be obvious, dodging starvation, random war, plague and een minor medical problems becoming deadly isn't exactly conducive to being as happy as you could be without these things. If you want to make a case for the "natural" life of simple pleasures, sure, it could be attractive contrasted against the cacophony of modern digital and other distractions, but here's a basic thing: If you want that kind of life today, within the relative safety net of modern medicine and economic support in a wider sense, you're free to pursue it as intensely as you like, and more safely than you ever could have before. If on the other hand, you, living in some grimmer, dirtier past, wanted any other sort of life, the choice didn't even really exist unless you were one of an incredibly tiny minority that formed the elites of society. And even among these people, the slightest infection could randomly kill you, losing your eyesight with age was a gradual sentence into blindness, and god help you if you ever were to have any major dental or surgical needs that are today fixable with little fuss. Whatever you might think of Steven Pinker, the guy's fundamental argument is broadly true even if some specific details might be cherry-picked(and i'd like to see which one's you're referring your suspicion to) Again though, feel free to list the stuff we've lost. I'd love to see what you refer to and balance it against what we've gained.

harimau777 2y ago
Speaking from a US perspective, a lot of people have lost their connection to society and to a sense of meaningful cultural identity. There's a crisis of singleness that hasn't been present in much, although not all, of human history. Home ownership is way down. At various points throughout human history it was common for people to own their own homes. Most people have very little autonomy in their day to day work. In the past most people worked on small scale farms and cottage industries where they didn't have layers upon layers of middle managers micromanaging them.
- DaoVeles 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jbgt 2y ago

I recently discovered a blog by a historian that tries to describe life as it was. Here's the post about what's needed to feed society with bread (there are many others) https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/ https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they... To my understanding, much of the work was backbreaking, disease was a big problem, starvation around the corner every year. And governance and freedoms were mostly reduced to service to a local strongman. And this is before the industrial revolution, working in insalubrious factories, belching smoke steam engines etc. Nowadays I think things are significantly better for the majority of people.

DaoVeles 2y ago
Just to add a few things. Hygiene theory has gone a long way to alleviate some of the more problematic disease issues. I have said that if we went full Mad Max (I don't think we are), hygiene theory would survive because of how useful it is. Starvation is one of those issues of the odd cycles of nature. Many I have spoken with that do back to the land farming have said, on a 5 year average calories aren't an issue. The problem is it usually means 3 bumper years followed by two starvation years. Thru modern agriculture we have both made systems of storage and fertilizers that flatten over these issues. As for the governance of strongman. There was the flip side of, they couldn't strong arm people TOO much because if enough people figured it was worth over throwing them, the boss would be overthrown with violence or death. It was risky being at the top, there was a reason why the kings thrown was backed up to a wall. Stops the assassin coming from behind.
somenameforme 2y ago
The problem is that in leaving much of undesirable things behind, we've also left many of the desirable things behind and it's not entirely clear if we can ever reclaim them in society as it is. One paragraph stuck out quite clearly to me in your link: --- "Of course our farmers don’t care about maximum efficiency (because that means for maximum efficiency of people who aren’t the farmers eating the surplus). They care about marrying, having families, raising children, keeping friends, staying close to loved ones and so on. Farmers, after all, are people, not mere tools of agricultural production (we will talk about non-free farmers next time) and so they do not serve their farmers, their farms serve the needs of their families." --- And "friends", as the article also describes, meant something very different. It was not infrequent that friends could be entire households where relationships would last for generations. Modern life has really done away with most of these things. I'd also say that many things people look on as negative, like difficult labor, are not necessarily so. I spent a fair amount of time when I was young working in construction and it was some of the most rewarding paid work I have ever done, by a wide margin. If it paid as well as the path I ended up taking, I would have absolutely stayed in construction for as long as my body held out. That last part might sound grim, but it's the exact same in fields like software development. Over time your mind will slow, as will your motivation to keep up with the latest API, language, and just general trends. At that point you're going to be headed for 'early retirement', quite likely even earlier than a guy working construction - with construction workers having a median age of around 40!