> In reality the modal life expectancy of adults (most common age of death other than 0) has been pretty stable in the 70s-80s range for most of human history- the low average was almost entirely due to infant mortality.
From this article:
"Researchers also collected data about hunter-gatherer societies. The 17 different societies include paleolithic and modern-day hunter-gatherers and the mortality rate was high in all of them. On average, 49% of all children died.[5]"
Which categorically states:
"Unfortunately there simply is not enough direct paleodemographic archaeological data to make definite claims about the global patterns of infant and child mortality rates of our Paleolithic hunter–gatherer ancestors."
The author of the Our World in Data piece seemingly intentionally conflates the proxy with actual archaeological evidence of the actual child mortality rates. Given the clear warning in the cited article about making definite claims, I cannot read the deception any other way.
After seeing this error, I do not know how you could possibly trust anything they have to say on the matter.
It mostly is. The biggest gains are in childhood. Aldo consider that you’re looking at figures for England and Wales, which isn’t necessarily representative.
The largest contribution to improving life expectancy is measured by reductions in child mortality. The factors that drove those improvements (infection control, improved hygienic practices, food quality, regulation of food and drug purity, medicine) benefited everyone, but had the biggest impact on the old and young. In the 1850s, 8,000 infants died annually from adulterated milk alone.
I think of my own journey. In 1824, 200 year ago Spooky23 would have died 20 years ago, a half blind cripple. 2024 Spooky23 is healthy with no back issues and god willing a few more decades.
In 1850 a 0 year old would expect to live to 41.6 years. A 5 year old would expect to live to 55.2.
If we waved a magic wand and let all infants survive past childhood with nothing else changed in 1850 life expectancy would still be 27 years lower than it is today. Or put another way you'd have the same life expectancy as someone in South Sudan or Somalia.
Nobody waved a wand. The contaminated milk that killed infants killed adults too - alcohol and milk were alternatives to unsafe water. Public health, medicine and other factors improved things.
We don’t really have great stats from before the 19th century. Was 1850 a nadir in life expectancy? I’m not sure - but I suspect it varied by region and rural/urban conditions. 1750 NYC wasn’t as gross as 1850.
Indeed, this conversation is a good illustration of the damage that Bayesian statistics have done to the "educated" populace. Not that they're inherently bad--it's just a different statistical approach, and it's generally good not to assume a universal background, that everything is normal, etc.--but by telling people it's fine to question statistical conclusions because the distribution might be different, it liberates certain people from ever having to actually change their minds based on new information, because they can just posit a different distribution that satisfies their own biases.
I realize this is a bit of a "no true Scotsman" but what you are talking about is a gross misuse of Bayesianism- where your own biases are incorrectly treated as extremely strong evidence.
I am partial to using unform priors over all possibilities, and then just adding in the actual evidence for which you can actually quantify its quality/strength. Your "prior" for a new situation is constructed by applying the data you already had previously to a uniform prior- not by fabricating it from whole cloth via your biases. In practice this may be impossible for humans to do in their heads, but computers certainly can!
> It mostly is. The biggest gains are in childhood.
The life expectancy of a 60-year old going from 74.4 to 84, or a 70-year old from 79.1 to 85.9, is significant and meaningful. Not as much as a newborn's LE going from 41.6 to 81.1. But far from "pretty stable in the 70s-80s range for most of human history."
Also, recent life-expectancy increases have come from adult morality reductions [1].
Do you have evidence for your assertion? Of what significance is the ratio of highest to lowest paid employee? Shareholders of a particular company pay CEOs, not whoever "we" is.
Producing more value than you are compensated for ... hmmm what does that sound like? You could say it sounds like the human condition. Which employees in the pyramid do you think have the worst scalar here?
This may be true for CEO’s turning dysfunctional companies around on personal authority, but I find it hard to believe for companies that are already running perfectly well.
1) wringing its hands about a problem that probably has less of an impact on construction prices than a single NIMBY catching a cold and missing the next zoning meeting
2) suggesting an alternative that would charitably be 1000x the current market clearing price, ignoring the fact that there are probably alternatives at 1.2x, 1.3x, and 1.8x the current price that will kick in long before the 1000x solution would become relevant
.
There are many things that markets handle poorly, but this is not one of them, and the stupidity on display in this comments section is a stark reminder why markets are a good default choice for coordinating human activity.
No kidding. Sand is one of the cheapest substances you can buy, and always has been. If it increases enough in price, builders will use something else. They're still using sand...
I recommend the book "More Money Than God" which studies the history of hedge funds and in the end suggests that successful hedge funds are not simply statistical survivors.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how are randomness and the emh related?
AFAIK random walk theory assumes the market is unpredictable and is consistent with the emh while other theories like the adaptive market hypothesis assume the opposite and are still consistent with emh.
If the EMH were true, price curves would always display maximum entropy, i.e. randomness, because there would be no spare redundant information that could be used to make predictions about the future. (This is based on Shannon's Communications Theory, but the maximal entropy bound applies to any system that mixes a predictable signal with random noise.)
It doesn't matter if you use an evolutionary explanation for price curves, as in AMH, or claim they're controlled by planetary alignments - because the prediction that price curves show maximum entropy is falsifiable regardless of possible causes.
And when it's tested, it is indeed falsified. See e.g.
tl;dr There are standard tools for estimating entropy, and they all agree that markets aren't truly random. Therefore they can't be maximally efficient.
Quants make a living by mining the signal from the randomness. There's a lot of debate about the best way to do this, but there's no serious disagreement among quants that it's possible - and the people who make money by employing them tend to agree.
Interesting, I'm familiar with information theory but not in the context of financial markets. I'm a little confused though because I assume you're referring to the channel coding theorem (mixing a signal with random noise), but that seems like begging the question to me. Don't you have to make the assumption that the market is a predictable signal with noise for it to be applicable?
I'm sure people employed to predict the stock market believe they are able to predict the stock market, but as far as I'm aware it's an open question in academia.
Also, I should point out, although I do believe markets are random, the intent my original post was more to point out the parent's argument by authority.
> Do you disagree that secrets during war are necessary?
I don't think Executive Branch secrets from Congress -- that is, things that will not be disclosed honestly on request by the Congress as such (which is not the same as individual members of Congress acting on their own) -- are ever justified or necessary, in war or peace.
To the extent that secrets (e.g., from the enemy in time of war) are necessary for which not routinely disclosing information to Congress is justifiable as a security measure, the Executive acting appropriately to maintain the confidence of Congress in its use of its discretion so as to avoid Congress needing to demand information which should be kept secret is equally necessary. Any President who honestly feels that they cannot protect the security of the nation while responding to Congress's demands for information should recognize that they have failed to maintain the confidence necessary to function effectively as President and resign.
Foreign enemies are always a convenient excuse for lack of domestic accountability, but they are never a sufficient excuse.
Robert Gates put it eloquently: the US is in its own wars of choice, and not in any war that is forced upon it. So, what do you think about the secrets that would conceal the real reasons of the war that requests to be secret?
bosma was asking: "Are there any things that should be kept secret during the course of war?". The obvious answer that he's fishing for is "Yes. Stuff that's critical to OPSEC.". [0]
This is a silly question to ask. AFAICT, Congress hasn't ever been briefed on the day-to-day of wartime activities. They are often lied to about our motivations for declaring war. That's obviously a very bad thing to do.
[0] The funny thing about stuff that's classified for OPSEC reasons is that it has a really short shelf life. That is to say, stuff that's sensitive OPSEC stuff can often be declassified in a matter of hours or weeks... because the actions described by the classified information have taken place and everyone knows that they took place. (e.g. information about troop movements in preparation for tomorrow's assault would be sensitive until the assault happens.)
> AFAICT, Congress hasn't ever been briefed on the day-to-day of wartime activities.
But they're also not normally briefed on the high-level view of intelligence sources and methods, to ensure that those sources and methods remain available. During WWII it's not like the Navy briefed Congress that they could read much of the Japanese Navy's messages.
And even with that precaution the U.S. Navy came perilously close to tipping off Japan. A journalist embedded with Naval forces somehow gained information that the U.S. Navy had known Japan's fleet composition at Midway before the battle, and that was published in the Chicago Tribune. If Japan had been paying attention she would have realized that her ciphers were very possibly being read and taken countermeasures that would have destroyed the usefulness of that intelligence source.
To be clear, I think Congress has the right to have access to whatever information is needed to effectively oversee the NSA. But I don't see how that would imply all 535, every 2 years, being read-in to full TS and SAPs and given all details. That would make more sense for the specific subcommittee charged with overseeing intelligence, but unfortunately (for privacy advocates), that's the very same panel of people most supportive of NSA.
> That is to say, stuff that's sensitive OPSEC stuff can often be declassified in a matter of hours or weeks... because the actions described by the classified information have taken place and everyone knows that they took place.
Minor quibble - this isn't always true.
If a hacker knows two vulnerabilities to exploit, but only exploits one of them, he keeps an advantage by keeping the extent of his intelligence a secret. If he only knows of the one that was exploited, he's not benefitted by admitting a lack of intelligence.
Apply to enemy troop positions and competitor pricing strategies as appropriate.
I was a defense contractor during the Cold War, a scary time in many ways.
It profoundly troubles me that the military intelligence complex is acting like we are still in the Cold War. The world changes and things done in the past are often not the rigt things to do in the present and future. This is a brittle mindset, looking at the past and not the current situation.
She's completely misunderstood and misrepresented. There are countless examples of this.
In politics, she's seen as the epitome of all that is "right wing", whatever the Hell that means. Her ethics are disregarded as simple ignorant selfishness. It's easy to see why many would disagree with her.
Academia simply dismisses her. However, her ideas are becoming harder to ignore - they are important!
Highly recommend reading at least Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Then pick up Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and the recently released Understanding Objectivism . UO is very good (it's useful/personal, down to earth), but requires familiarity with Objectivism.
This isn't true: https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortalit...