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Comment by jaakl | Hacker News Reader

The only thing what has changed is childhood mortality. If you take statistical lifetime of most animals (say frogs) and count in all offspring with hope to describe their average life duration then it would be low number of seconds. Human as such seems to have always same lifespan programmed in, just natural early mortality has been taken away. Basic statistical bias. Does almost removed early mortality really make our species stronger/better is another question. Removal of one natural survival test may have its own consequences.

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Definitely not the only thing. Maternal mortality is another big thing. War, famine, malnutrition....

Although the max age hasn't increased, the proportion of people who reach it has.

There are other factors too, sure. But I’d like to remind here that wars killing people too soon are still a thing, now even in the Global North. If you have any means to help to bring end closer to these current issues, please do so.

We have tech community (some of them YC alumni) delivering essential equipment (trucks, generators) to the chrisis zone for example. Today west seems to be already tired of the news and this is exactly what the conflict starter counts on.

This is not true. Humans died on injuries and sickness that are easily treatable now. They used to be more frequent and deadly.

Humans got frequently born with disabilities because malnutrition in pregnancy (like a lack of iodine) that just don't happen anymore in West.

There were whole classes of these issues that killed people and just don't exist anymore.

In the other hand they were not dying from technology induced accidents, like traffic :) Sure it is simplification, but the point is that statistical average life duration and total lifespan of adult person have quite weak correlations.

Actually even now these early years are most risky ones, just the scale is different. Now I have witnesses bias here also - in my 40ies I can expect to live 50 years more, very different from a newborn with immediate terminal condition. So lifespan does have different meaning for us.

It does not cancels out. It is not just simplification, you have to grossly overestimate traffic deaths now and underestimate accidental deaths in the past. (Basically regardless of when and where you place "the past".)

> Actually even now these early years are most risky ones, just the scale is different.

Babies mortality used to be huge too. And maternal mortality used to be huge by our standards too.

People used to die from transportation, drowning when crossing rivers, accidents around horses, etc... were very frequent. Safety codes are fairly modern.

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