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Comment by pandapower2 | Hacker News Reader

That's not really true. Once you exclude people who died in childhood the average life expectancy shoots up.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-b...

In England and Wales around 1850 the life expectancy overall was around 40 because a lot of people died as children and dragged down the average.

For someone that made it to 5 years old their life expectancy goes us 15 years to 55.

People now definitely have a higher life expectancy but the difference isn't as vast as some might assume.

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> That's not really true. Once you exclude people who died in childhood the average life expectancy shoots up.

An entertaining use of the word "true".

Yes, if you exclude a lot of the data, the average changes :)

Sarcasm aside, that is an important point in average life span statistics, but doesn't change the point that preindustrial life was "Nasty, brutish and short", as the old saying goes.

Also, 1850s England was the richest place on earth, almost a century into industrialism. Already a vastly elevated existence compared to our "natural state".

No, "not nasty brutish and short". And not "everybody suffered a short lifespan" either. As we have just seen.

What is true is that many children died young. Beyond that they lived almost as long as we do.

If they had modern medicine then the numbers would have equaled out. Heck, with their superior diet they may have lived even longer.

So the question is, do we need to work long hours to have modern medicine?

Your own numbers say that the richest population in the world in 1850 - way into industrialization - died at 55 on average, after ignoring child mortality. Which BTW means they watched maybe 1/4 of their children die.

If any population lived like that today, their lives would certainly be called nasty, brutish and short.

Well relatively short. Not necessarily nasty and brutish tho.

And, as I said, modern medicine might fix that.

OK, the nasty and brutish part might not have been huge.

Modern medicine is great, but it turns out to not add that many years to our life spans. Mostly money does. Or more likely, the healthy lives money buys.

Put in other words, it's much better to not get sick than to have great health care!

(I'm not just bullshitting here, this is what the data shows (not that I have any links with proofs to show (so feels free to not believe this :)))

Oh I totally believe it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

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