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Human history in the very long run (2021)

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Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)

#81

Post by southernplaces7 »

hattmall wrote: post #53
southernplaces7 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>major dental or surgical needs that are today fixable with little fuss I guess perhaps that's true in some countries, but not for the US. People put off major medical needs for years and even decades to wait until they can get on medicare. Dental issues are even worse. Yes, the availability of the treatments is nice, but the majority of people are deeply stuck in modern society to have access to those treatments.

Truly? You're comparing problems in access to smooth insurance coverage among a certain percentage of the U.S. population to a total lack of existence for anything resembling modern medical and dental care in the world of the pre-industrial era?

I could make a large list of all the ways in which this comparison is laughable.

Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)

#82

Post by southernplaces7 »

mxkopy wrote: post #35
southernplaces7 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Again though, feel free to list the stuff we've lost. The first thing that comes to mind is dependence on other people. Modern life has made it possible for the average person after a certain age to live without meaningful interaction with others. In the same vein one’s ability to choose one’s company has been greatly increased, which leads to superficial relationships and the isolation of those that no one chooses…

[dead]

Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)

#83

Post by anal_reactor »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #19
darby_nine wrote: post #3

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)

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…

> 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.

The will to live.

The depression is rampant. People are lonelier than ever, and they eventually kill themselves. Despite the fact that the world is objectively a better place to live, for the first time in history of any species people don't want to reproduce because it sucks.

Human happiness is directly correlated with relationships. Not with technological progress. But with relationships. Which are under fire in modern society.

But hey, here's a new iPhone. Go browse tiktok on it or something.

Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)

#84

Post by harimau777 »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #69
harimau777 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

>Speaking from a US perspective, a lot of people have lost their connection to society and to a sense of meaningful cultural identity. Aside from this being one hell of a subjective thing to measure vs. the past, and aside from it not necessarily being a bad thing (cultural identity has been used for centuries by demagogues to foment grotesque acts of religious and political violence, compared to what you see in many…

Perhaps it is possible to restructure things so that people find voluntary cultural associations and some alternative to traditional marriage like you are talking about. However, my focus is on how things are not on how things might be in some future which probably won't arrive until long after I'm dead.

You seem to be missing my point about autonomy. Certainly your average peasant was in a much worse economic situation than most modern people and has less human rights. However, they likely also had less moment to moment micromanaging. As long as you deliver your quota at the end of the season, your feudal lord probably isn't dictating your daily work.

Human beings are not purely logical creatures. While from an objective standpoint people are certainly better off today, it's possible that the things that we've given up are more important for subjective emotional/psychological wellbeing.

Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)

#85

Post by darby_nine »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #19
darby_nine wrote: post #3

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)

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…

> 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.

I mostly agree, but my point was that materialist analysis has obvious limits. It also naturally favors industrial society as industrial society optimizes for material production (not necessarily material satisfaction, mind you, hence why I mostly agree)

> If you want to make a case for the "natural" life of simple pleasures

If you presume superiority by comparison to our modern "complex" pleasures, sure, you're not going to find much interesting in the past.

> 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.

You will still be haunted by what you have seen of other humans and heard from their lips—there's no escaping that.

Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)

#86

Post by kmeisthax »

defrost wrote: post #70
DaoVeles wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is why I'm bullish on solar, BTW. It's better to have SOME energy, even if it's only daytime, than none at all if the Middle East decides it wants to veto the US again. Having worked with solar for a long while, I am always trying to tame people expectations of it. I think that and most renewables are awesome but we are trying to make them match the societal paradigm of fossil fuels and I think that is a fools…

> I don't think we will be living the same level of today's abundance. I don't think we will be living the same level of today's waste . Already per capita energy consumption has ceased to grow in countries such as the US and elsewhere, this is due to better effeciences in energy use. It's not just solar, across the board there is more and more research on better ways to make hydrogen from water, better ways to make…

I think I heard something like 30% of all energy production gets turned into waste heat somewhere in the grid? Home supplies in the US are 120VAC60, you have high-voltage transmission lines at all sorts of voltages, and then most of our electronics have to rectify that to DC. I have to wonder how much of that loss goes away when the majority of household power is consumed in the same building it is produced.

Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)

#87

Post by somenameforme »

jbgt wrote: post #46
darby_nine wrote: post #3

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)

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... 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…

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!

Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)

#88

Post by ta20240528 »

Xen9 wrote: post #76
openrisk wrote: post #62

> there’s this new class of people who don’t grow the food and just take stuff Pretty good summary of the latest "tech" business models as well :-) The question is: why does this happen? Why do the many typically fail to limit how exploitative the few? People usually seek answers in morality (or the lack thereof) but morality is a complex emergent phenomenon that is always "too little, too late". One fundamental fact…

Organizations not connected to remote manipulation of public opinion have an evolutionary disadvantage. Were there no one using it, then it would be a power vacuum, and those tend to get filled regardless. My personal theory regarding morality is that since we did not spend long time evolving to world where writing is a technology, there is no emotional reaction to contract that will allow a factory to pollute killin…

Who trained you to vote and - you know - buy milk and bread and fuel…?

Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)

#89

Post by tim333 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #4

Is there any writer who criticizes Marx on his own terms? Marx agreed that quality of life can improve under capitalism. The whole point was a ethical/social critique of mismatched incentives and power imbalances of such an arrangement. It doesn't matter if life improves if the only choices one has in life is either live under the power imbalance of wage labor or extract value from those who do. If folks can be blame…

What do you mean by "criticizes Marx on his own terms"? What terms are those? A problem I have is there are hundreds of pages of stuff he wrote so he's hard to pin down. Not a fan myself. He seems to do a lot of taking everyday life and splitting the people into classes who should fight each other which was then ceased upon but unpleasant people to cause 100m + deaths and much suffering. Also much of the basic content seems crap to me but it's hard to pin the arguments amongst the endless waffle.

To pick one quote though "Marx thought that the capitalistic system would inevitably destroy itself." Not it hasn't - it's all bollocks basically and the aftershocks through Russia and the like still end up blowing up children's hospitals etc to this day. I don't think anyone in the last thousand years has been responsible for more suffering.

Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)

#90

Post by kelseyfrog »

tim333 wrote: post #89
kelseyfrog wrote: post #4

Is there any writer who criticizes Marx on his own terms? Marx agreed that quality of life can improve under capitalism. The whole point was a ethical/social critique of mismatched incentives and power imbalances of such an arrangement. It doesn't matter if life improves if the only choices one has in life is either live under the power imbalance of wage labor or extract value from those who do. If folks can be blame…

What do you mean by "criticizes Marx on his own terms"? What terms are those? A problem I have is there are hundreds of pages of stuff he wrote so he's hard to pin down. Not a fan myself. He seems to do a lot of taking everyday life and splitting the people into classes who should fight each other which was then ceased upon but unpleasant people to cause 100m + deaths and much suffering. Also much of the basic conten…

> A problem I have is there are hundreds of pages of stuff he wrote so he's hard to pin down.

It sounds like you're referring to a book? Maybe you can clarify. I read Capital Vol 1 during COVID, and I've come to realize that, without being hyperbolic, I've encountered zero people with criticisms of Marx who have read what he's written.

It's commenting without reading the article on steroids and it frankly makes the critic look foolish because they fantasize about the books content and then attack their own fantasy and then claim they haven't done so. It's not difficult to read a book and then critique it. It's just wild that this had repeatedly failed to occur.

People don't seem capable of reading things they might disagree with, and seem unable to accept that anyone might write something that has parts that are right and parts that are wrong.

Psychs call this all or nothing approach, black and white thinking or splitting and it's a defense mechanism. I think we can do better.

There's a very simple way to prove my statement wrong by contrary evidence. Someone can simply read a book they might disagree with. I actively encourage it. If someone has the desire to voice their disagreement of a thing, the least they could do is be familiar enough with the thing to make a well-constructed and relevant critique. I actively encourage folks to be better critics.

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