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Comment by glomgril | Hacker News Reader

Limitations and methodological questions about OP aside, I really question whether our modern lifestyle and all the technologies that enable it have led to increased human thriving. Medical advances have obviously been huge in making life longer and less painful for the (lucky subsets of the) masses. But setting that aside, is life today (in a rich western country) more "enjoyable" or "fulfilling" now than it was, say, 500 years ago? What about 200 or 100? Or 5000? IDK, but increasingly it feels like a simple life in a small insular community with limited access to information is a better setup for "human thriving" than what we're living in today.

Obviously life is much "easier" today from the perspective of material conditions, but why assume that this is a "good" thing?

Or maybe I'm just a delusional Teddy K fanboy who's sick of typing on a computer all day, day after day, year after year.

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I think you’re undervaluing the importance of 1) not starving and 2) being able to drink clean water. I’d also point out that the economic conditions of 500-150 years ago were predicated on slavery, serfdom, female guardianship and colonialism. Even if you look only at the life of the average white man they were largely bound to live as serfs, and exist in state of total oppression. I’m sure some had a better life, but the majority of people lived and died in abject poverty as the playthings of a militarized elite.

People forget that the 8 hour workday, paid time off, and every other workers right were won at a price of blood [1].

But on the topic of people being better off I would also disagree strongly: the wealthy were the wealthy, and still poorer today in everyway that matters. The King of France might've notionally had an army, but all his money in the world couldn't buy the inspiration, creativity or organizational skill which made indoor plumbing possible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike

There are more people in slavery now than ever...?

As long as you're willing to eat trash you aren't going to starve, but sadly, being able to drink clean water is hardly a given in America today.

This appears to be a hidden Flint reference, so I must point out Flint's water was fixed in 2019 and people have yet to stop trying to claim it's still bad.

Flint was only one example sadly, there's a surprising number of communities in the US who are, or recently have been, unable to get drinkable water from their tap. Often for reasons like crumbling infrastructure, lead, or other contaminants. Seriously, search whatever state you like and you'll probably find there is, or recently was, large numbers of Americans there under orders to avoid drinking their water or only using it after boiling it.

I have yet to see a national map of every area where the water isn't safe to drink, but I'd recommend checking cities in your area often and checking any place you plan on visiting because it rarely gets a lot of attention. I expect things to get even worse once we get federally enforced standards and rules for PFAS contamination.

Here are some recent examples:

https://www.25newsnow.com/2022/11/21/boil-order-large-portio...

https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2022/07/calif...

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/water-boil-order-issued-...

https://www.newsweek.com/florida-city-issues-boil-water-warn...

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/michigan/articles/20...

https://people.com/human-interest/boil-water-notice-lifted-i...

https://cdphe.colorado.gov/press-release/town-of-superior-is...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/21/lead-contami...

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment/ct-illinois-...

https://www.mynbc5.com/article/new-hampshire-town-forced-to-...

Not going to compare centuries, but from a day to day perspective I don't see that many people truly 'thriving'. The human mind/body loves homeostasis though. I see a good amount of people who are generally happy, or at least content, some settling into family life with newborns, many who are trying to find themselves(a quest that often gets interrupted by hours of mindless scrolling on app X). The medical advances of today are often prolonging painful existences, but humans are very adaptable to that kind of pain(have personal experience with this one).

There is something to your comment of life being easier(and not necessarily being a good thing). Fruits and vegetables often grow the best harvests when they are challenged(wind, rain, etc...) and I think this is also reflective of the human condition. I'm not saying go to war tomorrow so you can experience hardship, but there are ways to make life more challenging so that when true challenges arise, one can be a little stronger. I think we are losing some of this grit today.

Every generation will say that the generation after them is losing grit. When we solve problems or make tasks easier, that gives us time for other tasks. How much grit is actually necessary and who needs grit the most?

It would be helpful to be specific about what challenging behavior encourages grit or not. e.g. Going to the DMV does not improve my patience or make me a better person. To your point: What should we make challenging? Or better yet, how can we scale challenges to encourage grit?

Humans have limited energy and time resources to expend on being alive. We divert the energy spent on challenging things that don't matter to high-profile items, not necessarily better problems.

Conversely, what about the damages of going through too much challenge that you don't have the ability to meet? Does it always turn out OK after you've failed beyond belief? Is the ability to overcome challenges (beyond your basic day to day) even matter? SOME people might be able to improve the world by becoming resilient to challenge but MOST people will not affect the world in any way meaningfully in the long-term (even if they are a part of a team that does).

My point was that practicing something like better patience may make an otherwise stressful DMV visit an ordinary affair. No one will ever know which challenges they will get presented with in life, but you can bet most people will eventually have to deal with massive loss of some sort or a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. For a high school kid this might be that paper that is due in 2 days, for others it might be a car crash that kills both parents.

Grit is developed in part by hearing that little voice in your head that says “I don’t feel like doing this” and then going out and doing that thing. I wouldn’t necessarily expect others to lay out a curriculum for you to develop these types of things. It could be going for a mile run or helping a coworker on a Friday afternoon, it doesn’t have to be going on a 25 mile run every other day.

While improving the world could be an end result, the main driver is probably just to have a more manageable existence for oneself.

Lastly, it doesn’t always turn out okay, and knowing how to deal with that needs to be part of the toolbox.

Now I hate the word grit haha

I also hate the word grit, it gets tossed around too much in entrepreneur spaces, but thanks for the insight!

> But setting that aside, is life today (in a rich western country) more "enjoyable" or "fulfilling" now than it was, say, 500 years ago?

Wander a graveyard from the 1800s and see how many very young children are listed on the headstones below their parents. How do we account for "a bunch of your kids are likely to die" in this metric?

It's easy to look with rose-hued glasses at the past and imagine an idylic pastoral lifestyle. The reality was quite a bit more complicated.

Right -- medical advances are the major exception to this line of thinking, as I noted.

There are a lot of exceptions. Strawberries in winter. Ice cream in summer. Contact with relatives on the other side of the world in an instant. Travel to Europe in hours. Unlimited fresh water. Indoor plumbing. Universal access to education. YouTube videos to learn how to use and fix a tool. etc. etc. etc.

All those things are great, or at least you and I think they are.

But that's not the question. The question is do those things make for greater human thriving and fulfillment? Increasing things that people find pleasurable does not necessarily have this effect. As a simple and extreme example, consider heroin.

I read a lot of old stuff, with a focus on anything I can find from regular people. I used to think like you do. I'm much less convinced nowadays that we've really made people's lives better in a meaningful, non-material way, excepting a very few examples that GP already alluded to (e.g., reduction in infant mortality, which accounts for virtually the entire life expectancy increase since 1850.)

Yeah this is pretty much my line of thinking. Not making any grand claims, just questioning the conventional wisdom. No doubt that the material conditions, health, and conveniences of today are unparalleled in history, that's just not what I'm talking about right now.

I think you are talking about "meaning" in life, the sense of being part of something larger than yourself, that isn't just accumulation for accumulation's sake. There is a debate there, no doubt.

The scientists and engineers that work insane hours at SpaceX are probably looking for something like that.

But in the past, for most people, life was merely a struggle to survive, that they lost sooner rather than later.

"Struggle to survive" gives meaning to life though. And one of the best ways to form deep connections with people is shared hardship.

It's really hard to say what's "better" in any sort of objective and quantifiable way; but it seems to me that by making the basics of life very easy we've sort of lost something along the way.

After all, playing a game that's so easy that it doesn't provide any challenge isn't much fun either, right?

The "Struggle to survive" gives meaning to life though.

No, it doesn't, this is just one of those banal transcendental platitudes that gets repeated enough to where it sounds like it's some sort of objective truth. Like the one about how "life only has meaning because it is short and ephemeral". By that logic an aborted fetus has had the richest life of all.

Life's meaning is ultimately in the eyes of the beholder. We all derive meaning differently, there is no universal solvent.

You are free to make your life as difficult as you want. You can move to Alaska and try to survive there from manual work.

There is a very good reason why people want to go from poor countries to rich and not the other way around. Poverty is not fun.

I think of this a lot whenever I hear people complain the world is too luxurious. I mean really people do have the option to live in more squalid conditions but they seem like they'd rather wax poetic behind their keyboards. It smacks of insincerity.

I get no joy from a game I can't clear.

That blows me away. Have you ever lost anyone?

I would very much argue diet IF properly utilized can indeed change your life for the better. Better nutrition just makes you feel good all the time while also making you live longer.

In the past they had to worry about growing wheat and not getting eaten by wolves, today they are mildly depressed at dislikes in twitter. You think it's a worse situation? I think people from the past would laugh at twitter problems.

Have you spent much time with people who deeply ruminate over their online persona? Not only is it a thing but very alarmingly people quickly go sideways into weird places. In a way I feel that less immediate suffering around us has led us to simply displace that bucket of pain into other areas of our lives. So better in a sense yes but the perceived improvement ... I"m not sure that many people are emotionally reaping the benefits.

Modern medical care, sanitation, and fantastic dietary options seem pretty great, sure would suck a lot to miss out on those.

Stuff like the internet is what I would call a mixed bag. I think we really underestimate how incredible it is to be able to look up how to do anything, fix anything, learn anything pretty much in a few clicks. Yet the para-social stuff is the new cigarettes. Pro-Ana and Incel communities being rather extreme examples of this where men and women are getting severely depressed over 5 pounds or a few millimeters of chin where they proceed to talk eachother into starving to death or getting limb lengthening surgery and well if they’re doing it you have to do it too if you want to keep up…

Pre or post agriculture?

Post agriculture I suppose it is pretty easy to argue that times were tougher in the past (medieval serfs got more days off and did way less work than we do today, but I'll concede that I'd rather my kids be alive and put in 40 hr/week).

Pre agriculture, which is the majority of human history? That's where things get interesting. People in hunter gatherer tribes lived long lives (assuming they survived childhood), didn't suffer from most of the things we need modern medicine and sanitation for (because those things are a result of agriculture itself), and "worked" about 30 hours per week if we use modern hunter gatherers like the !kung as proxies, and their "work" was doing things we do for relaxation these days like hunting, gathering, and foraging.

Unfortunately, there's no going back, so you better make sure you've got yourself a good keyboard.

I think in the context of your question, you're turning "thriving" from an attempt at objective measurement to an entirely subjective metric. Feel free to correct me if that isn't the case, but if it becomes subjective to thrive, I don't know that there is a right or wrong answer to "in which era are people thriving the most?"

Yeah that's pretty much where I end up: what it means to "thrive" is subjective and there's just not really a matter of the fact about what lifestyle is "best" for humans. Nevertheless, there are some scenarios that I think would be close to universally viewed as worse or better than others. I think the era we're living in now is close to being universally viewed as better than the past. Grass is always greener though I spose

I would add that there is such diversity among humans that what pleases or contents one will bore and anguish another. There is no single solution which is optimal for all.

Measuring well-being is a whole field of study. Surveying happiness is part of it. But the surveys don't go back very far.

Happiness has been going up worldwide but it has been dropping in the US since 2010. Which might be a part of this post.

There is Human Development Index (HDI) that is used to compare countries. It is based on life expectancy, education, and income. By those measures, there has been a huge increase in the last two centuries. And a big increase in many countries in last 50 years. But that more covers physical not emotional needs.

I think that parent meant "thriving" in the sense of emotionally, or perhaps spiritually. If we measure the number of people who are lonely, feel their lives are meaningless, and have no hope to be increasing rather than decreasing, then I think that's a pretty objective measure that we're not thriving.

Just my opinion, but I think life is better now than it was when I was a teenager in the 80's. I think a lot of you have forgotten how mind-crushingly boring your teenage years were.

I think the nuance that is lost is that the "better" is not uniform. The previous world worked better for some people, the current one works better for others. It is probably a net gain on the whole, but the dispersion of results might be stronger than the underlying trend.

Averages are what make comparisons hard - there is a lot of variation within the averages. Truckers in the U.S., for example, were way better off in 1970 than they are today (in relative terms). But an average factory worker in China was way worse off.

It's easy to underestimate the extent to which overstimulation and constant distraction are at least as frustrating as boredom.

I was also a teenager in the 80's.

Maybe it was more boring, not sure, but at least all the stupid stuff I did at the time wasn't documented on the internet. I don't know how I'd handle that.

I was a teenager in the 90's and don't remember it being particularly boring. There was plenty of TV & movies, video games, teenage shenanigans, school clubs, etc. I suppose video games had kind of a golden age in the 90's with the 4th (SNES) and 5th (PS1, N64) console generations, and PC games like Doom, Quake, Blizzard's first games in their franchises, etc. On second thought without all that I would have been a lot more bored.

"Medical advances have obviously been huge in making life longer and less painful for the (lucky subsets of the) masses."

Even this much is not clear. The economist Robert Gordon has argued, to my mind pretty persuasively, that medicine (i.e. doctors, hospitals, routine checkups) has received undue credit for improvements in health between 1870-1970 that are actually attributable to improved sanitation, diet, vaccination, etc.

I find it weird to define medicine in a way that excludes sanitation and vaccination. The other elephant in the room is antibiotics, which have managed to make many previously lethal infections manageable or even trivial.

Sanitation is a task performed by plumbers and garbage collectors, not by physicians.

This is definitely the case.

> Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/

Medical advances for adults since 1870 have mostly done little besides hold the line on keeping us alive through the effects of increased pollution, worse diets, and lower physical activity.

This is really, really disturbing when you think about how much of GDP is dedicated to health care.

I'm shocked that I've never heard this argument before. Very interesting and indeed, disturbing as well.

Read less fantasy and more history.

I recommend Laslett's "The World We Have Lost" (or its second edition, "The World We Have Lost Further Explored"), for a glimpse of life a mere 200 years ago. You'll need to pay close attention and read between the lines, though.

500 years ago people had technical problems with life. To survive today you only need to not do stupid things like social networks, MSM and web 2.0. We just aren't used to them. Some people even doubt they are dangerous! It's as if you thought dirty fruits are okay.

If you're ever lucky enough to ask someone in a western nation who came of age before World War II "What made the biggest positive difference in quality of life over the 20th century?" they'd most likely say "penicillin". It makes a tremendous positive difference not having to deal with the constant barrage of severe disease and death that was so common before modern vaccines and antibiotics.

At the same time, death to many of us has become little more than an abstract concept, something relegated mostly to the very old. With less suffering and death, we have less to ground us in an inescapable urgency about life, or a sense of immediate and pressing purpose. I'm convinced if it weren't for penicillin and vaccines, people would generally take life more seriously; there'd also be a lot more religious feeling, fervor, and searching.

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