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Comment by hshdhdhj4444 | Hacker News Reader

> what people did in the great grandfather era

Unfortunately the appeal to ancestry fallacy is always a terrible idea.

You see this in the nutrition space where “influencers” go on and on about how our ancestors ate, forgetting that our ancestors died extremely early relative to modern humans.

Similarly, our grandparents lived pretty terrible lives in many ways.

The reason to complain about the high cost of living is that the U.S. has an incredibly high GDP and yet Americans live highly precarious lives, not that in certain very specific ways our ancestors had it slightly better, which as you point out leads to all sorts of issues.

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Cost of living is always a somewhat distorted metric because it ignores tradeoffs. If I was living on ~500$/month in that area I’d spend way more on technology and far less on food.

Starlink and a local grocery store means the vast majority of the US is able to support a lifestyle most of humanity could only dream of until fairly recently without actually being that expensive. Year round bananas for dollars per pound is a fucking miracle of logistics.

Not that long ago one of my coworkers was effectively living in minimum wage in a major US city and tossing everything else into savings. Excessive number of roommates, no car, cooking simple vegetarian meals at home etc. At the other end if he had a major medical condition, drug addiction, etc he’d have been “fucked,” except for the fact modern medicine simply wasn’t available at any price again until recently so should we assume it’s normal.

>our ancestors died extremely early

No they didn't, stop using averages.

https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortalit...

Childhood mortality is only one factor, and I think at this point we're all aware that the "life expectancy was 40 years" statistic has a huge asterisk next to it. But yes, our ancestors really did die much, much younger than us.

> Childhood mortality is only one factor, and I think at this point we're all aware that the "life expectancy was 40 years" statistic has a huge asterisk next to it.

No, people who say that they “died extremely early relative to modern humans” mean the bunk dying at 40 due to old age myth. Not dying at 65 rather than 80.

Your link seems to show graphs going up but not why.[1] The medical breakthroughs have been, like first of discovering hygiene, vaccines and antibiotics. Which does exactly nothing to debunk what the OP[2] called “appeal to ancestry fallacy”. That we know medicine now (like hygiene, antiobitics) do not discredit claims like, you should eat like a hunter-gatherer or something like that.

[1] This seems typical of “data” outlets.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44078093

You're still focusing on averages, which is the error inherent in the myth.

While it's true that average life expectancy has increased, the point is that it was absolutely routine for people to live into their 60s, and not uncommon for them to live into their 70s or 80s.

See e.g. https://www.sapiens.org/biology/human-lifespan-history/

The average still means something. Yes a lot of people were living to 60s, 70s or 80s, but way more people than today were dying at a younger age because of a disease that can now be cured, hygiene not as good, etc.

> Similarly, our grandparents lived pretty terrible lives in many ways.

Our ancestors also had more children, less rates of depression and mental illness and the modern rates of socialization, marriage, etc are all in steep decline.

Therefore maybe the cardboard box apartment, transient friends, and access to all that nightlife isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. While we’re a lot richer and more well off it doesn’t seem like people are happier.

When I look at some of my favourite writers, philosophers, and scientists from past eras quite a few of them died in their 60s and 70s. Medicine and nutrition was poorly understood for that time. What they had in common was wealth and professions that wasn’t backbreaking labor. Child mortality was high and that is what really drags the average age down.

Our marginal increase in understanding of nutrition has had no detectible benefit in terms of population health or lifespan. People in past eras pretty much knew what to eat. Mostly the problem was that poor people simply couldn't afford enough high quality food.

It was not just child mortality. It was adults dying from diseases and infectiona we don't die of anymore too.

And smoking. Everybody in my parents' generation smoked and most of them died young.

And drinking. And drinking while engaged in physical activities with potential for injury.

> forgetting that our ancestors died extremely early relative to modern humans.

While it's true that average life expectancy has increased, it's not really accurate to say that "our ancestors died extremely early". See "Did Ancient People Die Young?" at https://www.sapiens.org/biology/human-lifespan-history/ :

> Mortality rates in traditional populations are high during infancy, before decreasing sharply to remain constant till about 40 years, then mortality rises to peak at about 70. Most individuals remain healthy and vigorous right through their 60s or beyond, until senescence sets in, which is the physical decline where if one cause fails to kill, another will soon strike the mortal blow.

> our ancestors died extremely early relative to modern humans

As others pointed out these claims are often skewed by high childhood mortality rates.

Beyond that, though, I'm curious why you consider the number of years lived to be a primary concern?

I'd rather live 50 good years than 80 miserable ones. I'd also rather live to 65 than make it to 80 with the last 30-40 years spent increasingly propped up with medications, doctors appointments, and invasive treatments.

> Similarly, our grandparents lived pretty terrible lives in many ways.

That's entirely subjective. My grandparents are no longer alive but I'm confident they would find many aspects of the average life today to be terrible.

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