Hacker News Reader

Comment by kkoncevicius | Hacker News Reader

You can also look at some examples of people from ~2000 years ago, in Greece. For example:

    Plato: 80
    Archimedes: 75
    Marcus Aurelius: 58
    Ptolemy: 84
    Aristotle: 62
    Socrates: 71
    Seneca: 92
    Epicurus: 71

These names are out of the top of my head, ages checked on Wikipedia - seems to be quite in line with the average life expectancy today.

View on HN

You are picking only people who's life work means they are remembered for 2000 years

That's surely going to be a huge source of bias, because obviously people who lived longer were more likely to have done enough to be remembered

There's probably some other bias here as well, because people doing intellectual work in those times probably had more privileges, more wealth, etc.

They're also going to be more male, meaning they didn't die in childbirth, a serious cause of death for women through most of history. And not males in warfare, a major cause of death for young men through most of history.

The average person lifespan would however included people who got born as slaves and lived as slaves their whole life. It would also include people who died as kids or young people. You are also excluding people who need to work physically to get enough food to keep healthy.

The original claim is about how long the average person lives. It is not about oldest people we have noted in history.

Without even take into consideration that Socrates and Seneca were essentially murdered, forced to commit suicide.

That's an unfair comparison, because these people all had a Mediterranean diet.

Yes OK, but the comparison interesting to me is how much did medicine help. If people lived to their 80 in those ancient times, just with some diet, then medicine is surely not giving us much of a longer live span today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com