

Why isn't the human race advancing faster? - sahillavingia
http://blog.dustincurtis.com/why-isnt-the-human-race-advancing-faster

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Umalu
"Since the 1970's, not much as changed." Oh, really?

"But human life expectancy hasn't changed at all, really..." Since 1970 US
life expectancy at birth has increased about 5-7 years:
<http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5414a6.htm>

"travel is still expensive (though cheaper, of course, but not by much)" Since
1970, roundtrip airfare between NYC and London has dropped, on average, from
$2600 to $600:
[http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/airfare...](http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/airfarenylondon.html)

There's still a lot of room for improvement, but since 1970 a lot has
improved.

~~~
dcurtis
As far as life expectancy, if you do three things to the data:

1\. Normalize it to account for war and crime-related deaths, so you only get
data that shows improvements to medical technology,

2\. Look at worldwide life expectancy, not just US, and

3\. Remove time people are kept artificially alive in hospitals or in
inpatient care without the ability to live on their own...

you find the numbers are essentially flat, with very tiny increases that are
barely statistically significant.

(I quickly looked for the papers I used to calculate this for lifepath.me, but
I can't find them right now. I'll post them all to that site when it launches,
though.)

\---

Interesting about airfare prices dropping. I didn't know it was by that much.

------
mycroftiv
Growing up in the 1970s and reading lots of sci-fi, I expected that by my
current age, I would be on an interstellar colony ship - or at least living on
one of Jupiter's moons. I also thought the human race was sure to give up on
traditional religious taboos and stop wasting lives and resources on war.

None of that happened, but as a consolation prize, modern smartphones and the
internet are still pretty amazing and the social changes they are bringing
about have obviously only just gotten started.

