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Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

I agree with a lot of what this article says regarding the "naturalistic fallacy",etc.

However, this quote is an example of shallow thinking that drives me nuts: "Of course, it’s hard not to note that cancer and heart disease are primarily diseases of aging, and life expectancy was so much lower back in the day that a much smaller percentage of the population lived to advanced ages"

Life expectancy FROM BIRTH has risen dramatically, but if you rule out those who died before they reached 5 years old, and rule out violent deaths and/or viral/bacterial plagues, you begin to realize that life expectancy is not much higher today.

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Life expectancy FROM BIRTH has risen dramatically,

Check more sources, and you will learn that life expectancy is rising at all age levels throughout the developed world. I've posted all of these links before here on Hacker News, and I don't mind posting them again.

Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,

http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...

originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. A comparison of period life expectancy tables and cohort life expectancy tables for men and women in Britain

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lifetables/period-and-cohort-l...

helps make the picture more clear. ("Period life expectancy" is what is usually reported for a whole country. But cohort life expectancy provides a better estimate of future lifespans of young people today,

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1...

and is still steadily on the rise around the world.) Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...

I came here to post the same thing. This is its own fallacy.

It was used to market estrogen supplementation, among other spurious remedies, to post-menopausal women. "Women didn't used to live very long after menopause--the life expectancy was only about 50. You need to take estrogen pills to keep you healthy into old age."

This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy is NOT the average age at death.

But then they found out that the estrogen pills were causing breast cancer, so that put a stop to that.

> This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy is NOT the average age at death.

Just because lower infant mortality raises the life expectancy, doesn't mean that the average age at death hasn't gone up. I agree with your life expectancy claim do, but it doesn't mean the opposite is true either.

That's a true statement--infant mortality has declined and average age at death has also increased, but the increases in average life expectancy are much more greatly attributable to the former than to the latter.

The fallacy is "{disease} is a disease of old age, and people didn't used to live past {average caveman life expectancy}. Therefore humans almost never experienced {disease} until modern times." This is very far from the truth, and is usually delivered as part of a sales pitch. I was surprised to see it repeated in the OP almost verbatim. The article debunks several other fallacies but, disappointingly, perpetuates this one.

I'm pretty sure that life expectancy figures generally discount infant mortality as a separate issue.

People did not live all that long in prehistory. Infections and diseases were more fatal more often. It's not like if you made it to ten you'd be as likely to live to 70 as someone is today, no sir.

What's your point? If you rule out all causes of death, everyone lives forever. People live longer because they die less.

The point is that if cancer and heart disease are disease of aging, but were rare in paleolithic times, then a life expectancy lower than the age at which they are expected to strike does not preclude the possibility that there were other factors than early death that reduced their incidence.

If a disproportionate number of people died before the age of 5, a life expectancy of 40 means that many lived beyond that age, and would be expected, all things being equal, to have contracted cancer and/or heart disease.

Yes, if you rule out everything that killed people sooner, life expectancy was not too much less.

>Life expectancy FROM BIRTH has risen dramatically, but if you rule out those who died before they reached 5 years old, and rule out violent deaths and/or viral/bacterial plagues, you begin to realize that life expectancy is not much higher today.

That is a myth. Life expectancy is much higher at all ages. In ancient Rome, the life expectancy for a 15 year old was 52. In modern first world nations, life expectancy at birth is 80. That is a huge extension of adult lifespan. Just because infant mortality was part of the reason lifespans were lower in ancient times, doesn't mean it was the whole reason.

And you don't think the life expectancy for a 15 year old being 52 didn't have to do with deaths due to disease/violence?

Let's look at a familiar group of people who had zero access to antibiotics nor modern medicine. America's founding fathers:

"For their era, the 1787 delegates (like the 1776 signers) were average in terms of life spans.[15] Their average age at death was about 67. The first to die was Houston in 1788; the last was Madison in 1836.

Secretary Charles Thomson lived to the age of 94. Johnson died at 92. John Adams lived to the age of 90. A few—Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Williamson, and Wythe—lived into their eighties. Either 15 or 16 (depending on Fitzsimons's exact age) died in their seventies, 20 or 21 in their sixties, eight in their fifties, and five only in their forties. Three (Alexander Hamilton, Richard Dobbs Spaight and Button Gwinnett) were killed in duels."

I have no idea what point you are trying to make. Of course their lower lifespan was partly due to disease, that is the point.

No, its not the point. Did you even read the article? The article is making a claim that the specific "diseases of civilization" (heart disease, cancer, diabetes) would have been equally prevalent in primitive societies IF people had actually made it to old age. There is zero discussion or argument about the fact that people died of random shit that is today easily cured. The argument is due to the fact that the people that DIDN't die due to random pathogens/violent acts/etc DID live to comparable levels of old age, and the author doesn't get that. When more than half of children die before age 5, it skews the life expectancy statistic the author is citing to claim that there were no old people around to get heart disease or cancer. This is completely incorrect.

>The article is making a claim that the specific "diseases of civilization" (heart disease, cancer, diabetes) would have been equally prevalent in primitive societies IF people had actually made it to old age

Right. And you pretended that they did make it to old age and infant mortality was the cause of lower lifespans. I corrected that misconception. I honestly have no idea how you got this confused.

>DIDN't die due to random pathogens/violent acts/etc DID live to comparable levels of old age

No, they didn't. That's the point. Hitting 80 was exceptionally rare. Rare like hitting 110 is now.

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