Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)

Yes they do. It is a period of technological development. There is no singular timespan that makes up the stone age or bronze age or iron age, those periods are different depending on the people.

>If you’re referring to primitive tribes with no outside world contact

They have outside world contact, they simply choose to continue living the way they prefer instead of adopting modernity.

>then you’ll need to provide evidence and definitions for healthier/happier

The dictionary already does.

>They have high infant mortality rates, they kill disabled children, they die from treatable illnesses, and they starve during bad years.

The first three things are not healthy, and the last thing is false.

>Of course they have mental illness, there is no evidence they are immune to Down syndrome, schizophrenia, or anything else.

Please attempt to read what is being said rather than intentionally taking an obviously contrary definition so you have something to argue about. I am talking about the modern "mental illnesses", note the quotes, like depression and social anxiety which are epidemic in modernity, and do not exist in primitive cultures.

>Ugh, you accidentally forgot to provide any evidence of its harm again

Almost as if this is a discussion and not me publishing a scientific paper. You are welcome to look up the data linking omega 6 polyunsaturated fats to the modern disease epidemic.

>You just preceded it with another naturalistic fallacy that implied that it must be harmful because it’s industrial.

Simply repeating the fallacy fallacy is not going to accomplish anything.

Wealth inequality is not about income is it?

>doesn’t remain true for wealth for more than a couple generations

So, it only remains true for as long as it has existed?

>The latter is of course true because... math. 99% of the people are always going to be in the bottom 99%.

The statement isn't that 99% of people are in the bottom 99%, it is that it is the same people staying there.

>When you talk about the 1 percent for income, you are capturing doctors, lawyers, professors, and small business owners with your angst.

What part of "wealth inequality" would make you think repeating a deliberately misleading corporate propaganda piece about income would be productive?

Many things didn't exist before the 1900s, that still doesn't entail they are harmful. Furthermore, harm is dose-dependent. Water is harmful if you ingest too much. There is little evidence that these are harmful in appropriate doses. Again, most of the harm stems from abundance.

> [Famine is killing] more [people] as a percentage.

Citation?

> Do you think nutritional deficiencies don't exist any more? Common deficiencies include iron, B12, D, calcium, A, iodine, magnesium, zinc and folate.

Now where's the evidence that these deficiencies were not prevalent or worse throughout history, which is what you're actually claiming.

> No, osteoporosis was not common then.

Wrong:

https://reliawire.com/history-osteoporosis/

Note they list "aging population" as the cause: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S875632820...

> You can't dismiss a problem by throwing out random conflicting excuses.

You mean like the baseless, uncited claims you're making? I've now provided far more citations demonstrating your claims are incorrect than you have. And the "excuses" aren't conflicting, they're exhaustive covering many possibilities, all of which undermine your narrative.

> "Type 2 diabetes" and heart disease both didn't even exist

Wrong: https://www.healthline.com/health/heart-disease/history#anci...

As for type 2 diabetes, you have literally no basis to make that claim. There is plenty of historical data confirming the existence of diabetes throughout history, but it's not possible to reliably distinguish them given the data: https://www.healthline.com/health/history-type-1-diabetes#4

> No, it is a disease of consumption of toxic omega 6 polyunsaturated fats.

Citation?

> Fat people existed in medieval times. They did not get "type 2 diabetes".

Citation?

> And those incidents were due to being cut off from supplies

And from food spoiling.

> Another army preventing your food from getting to you is not an indication that you are unable to grow enough food and thus "everyone is spending all day trying to stave off starvation"

Good thing I never said that.

> Except none of those things. [Winter] are the times they spent feasting. We still have several of the same traditional feasts, just renamed to pretend they are christian.

Wrong: "The winter solstice was immensely important because the people were economically dependent on monitoring the progress of the seasons. Starvation was common during the first months of the winter, January to April (northern hemisphere) or July to October (southern hemisphere), also known as "the famine months". In temperate climates, the midwinter festival was the last feast celebration, before deep winter began. Most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter, so it was almost the only time of year when a plentiful supply of fresh meat was available.[5] The majority of wine and beer made during the year was finally fermented and ready for drinking at this time."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice#History_and_cu...

So basically the reason for the feasts is so they didn't have to waste precious food on keeping animals alive, because otherwise they'd all starve, like I said.

> Modern rates are higher than any other point in recorded history. We have poorer data from ancient times, but we do still have data. You even linked to some.

I linked to evidence that quite literally say we don't have enough historical data to infer the actual rates of suicide. So no, it doesn't at all indicate anything like what you claim.

> There is no reason to assume suicide rates were higher in medieval times just because you want to believe the iron age was some horrific time.

Except no one is making that claim. What I am saying is that your claim that modern rates are higher is baseless.

> Again, the people who still live in the stone age today and are healthier and happier than us right now and have essentially no modern "mental illnesses" like depression or social anxiety

Wrong:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/jo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_depression#Prehisto...

You've fallen into the common trap of romanticizing the past. Some aspects of older cultures indeed are healthier, but your apparent inclination to claim that rates of happiness and health are far worse today than they ever were is completely baseless.

And yet, you have provided no evidence of such. The evidence of harm is far from conclusive, and given the replication crisis, your stating these claims as facts is completely unjustified.

> Not they are harmful because they didn't exist before the 1900s.

What do you think the non-existence of these things prior to the 1900s proves exactly, that you keep bringing it up as if it's a relevant point? My points about the 1900s appear to be just as relevant to the discussion as your points.

> I see a pattern here where you state that common scientific knowledge is wrong unless I provide citations for it

I see a pattern where you keep claiming something is "common scientific knowledge" without any providing evidence of such a consensus.

> then when I do you just ignore those citations and the entire subject and proceed to call some other common scientific knowledge wrong. You can use google too.

When you do? When was that exactly? You've provided a single link to some articles that talk about CO2's effects on plant growth, completely ignoring the fact that I had already acknowledged that even if nutritional density were decreasing, the abundance is sufficient to feed the growing population.

Further, I'm not the one making dozens of unsubstantiated claims, you are. The burden of proof is on you here, not me to prove or disprove your claims, and yet I've gone out of my way to correct your misconceptions about history.

> I am well aware that people post common misconceptions on their blogs. If I link to a blog post about how the earth is really flat will that make it so?

Convenient that you ignore the paper that mentions the prevalence of osteoporosis is due to the aging population. Here's another one for you to deny: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24087808

> The history of type 2 diabetes is easy to learn about, it did not exist until the early 1900s.

Oh, do you mean it did not exist as a diagnosis? Because that seems like a fairly trivial point. If you literally mean that humans from history did not suffer from maladies that are a result of our biology, then that's a much stronger claim, so prove it.

> They didn't waste food, therefore they were all starving. Brilliant logic.

Nice how you just skip all the mentions of how common starvation was, and the actual justification for feasting in early winter.

> You linked to poor evidence for suicide rates. That is not the same as no evidence.

I asked for evidence. You have not provided any. Numerous sources I found all discuss how no robust evidence exists. Thus far, there is literally no reason to believe your claims, and considerable reason to disbelieve them.

> Neither of your links are even related to my statement, so going "DURRRR RONG!!11" seems a little odd.

You claimed that stone age hunter/gatherer societies were healthier. The first link I provided definitively proves otherwise.

You claimed that stone age hunter/gatherer societies didn't suffer from mental illness like depression. Historical documents discussing depressive symptoms are common. Are we to take this as evidence of some depression-like condition that's not depression? Are you seriously claiming that that's more believable?

> That's possible. Or perhaps you've fallen into the much more common trap of romanticizing the present.

Except I haven't made any such claims. At best, I've implied that there is no reason to think historical humans were much different in the maladies they suffered, except modern circumstances and abundance have clearly led to significantly lower infant and adult mortality. Which is actually well documented, commonly known fact, and runs contrary to what you have claimed.

> Again, there's a big difference between "the evidence is not strong enough to know that with 100% certainty" which is the case and "completely baseless" which is what you wish.

Since you've provided no evidence at all, and the evidence I've cited so far actually runs counter to what you claim, "baseless" is pretty accurate.